Definition: Information

From New World Encyclopedia

Etymology

From Middle English informacion, enformacion, borrowed from Anglo-Norman informacioun, enformation, Old French information, from Latin Ä«nfƍrmātiƍ (“formation, conception; education”), from the participle stem of Ä«nformāre (“to inform”).

Noun

information (usually uncountable, plural informations)

  1. That which resolves uncertainty; anything that answers the question of "what a given entity is."
  2. Things that are or can be known about a given topic; communicable knowledge of something
    I need some more information about this issue.
  3. The act of informing or imparting knowledge; notification
    For your information, I did this because I wanted to.
  4. (law, countable) A statement of criminal activity brought before a judge or magistrate; in the UK, used to inform a magistrate of an offense and request a warrant; in the US, an accusation brought before a judge without a grand jury indictment.
  5. A service provided by telephone which provides listed telephone numbers of a subscriber.
  6. Data that have been processed into a format that is understandable by its intended audience.

Derived terms

  • informationism
  • informationist
  • information retrieval
  • information science
  • information society
  • information superhighway
  • information theory
  • info short form of information
  • inside information

Related terms

  • inform
  • informant
  • informatics

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