Information
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃən/
- US IPA: /ˌɪnfəɹˈmeɪʃən/
- Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Origin
From Anglo-Norman informacioun, enformation et al., Middle French informacion, enformacion et al. (French: information), and their source, Latin Ä«nfÅrmÄtiÅ ("formation, conception; education"), from the participle stem of Ä«nformÄre ("to inform").
Full definition of information
Noun
information
(usually uncountable; plural informations)- Things that are or can be known about a given topic; communicable knowledge of something. from 14th c.I need some more information about this issue.
- The act of informing or imparting knowledge; notification. from 14th c.For your information, I did this because I wanted to.
- (legal) A statement of criminal activity brought before a judge or magistrate; in the UK, used to inform a magistrate of an offence and request a warrant; in the US, an accusation brought before a judge without a grand jury indictment. from 15th c.
- (obsolete) The act of informing against someone, passing on incriminating knowledge; accusation. 14th-17th c.
- (now rare) The systematic imparting of knowledge; education, training. from 14th c.
- (now rare) The creation of form; the imparting of a given quality or characteristic; forming, animation. from 17th c.
- (Christianity) Divine inspiration. from 15th c.
- (information theory) Any unambiguous abstract data, the smallest possible unit being the bit. from 20th c.
- A service provided by telephone which provides listed telephone numbers of a subscriber. from 20th c.
- As contrasted with data, knowledge which is gathered as a result of processing data. from 20th c.And as you can see in this slide, we then take the raw data and convert it into information.
- (computing) … the meaning that a human assigns to data by means of the known conventions used in its representation.
Usage notes
The definition of information in the computing context is from an international standard vocabulary which, though formally accepted, is largely ignored by the computing profession that should be adhering to it.http://eprints.utas.edu.au/1957/