digital
Noun pluraldigitals (some meanings)
Pluraldigitals (some meanings)
- 1Relating to computers, the internet, and the technology of the Information Age.
The company shifted to a fully digital workflow during the pandemic.
Children today are digital natives who grew up with smartphones.
UsageOften in go digital, the digital age and digital natives.
Similarelectronic, computerized, online
Oppositeanalog
- 2Representing values as discrete numbers, often binary, rather than as a continuous range.
Engineers prefer digital signals because they resist noise better than analog ones.
The thermometer gives a digital readout instead of a rising column of liquid.
UsageThe opposite is analog: a digital or an analog clock.
Oppositeanalog
Note
Here the finger has become a numeral: the adjective works as digit + -al, with digit meaning a number. A digital clock or meter shows its reading as figures. Elenco's M-1000E manual describes its meter as a "3½ digit digital multimeter," with both words side by side.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The numerical meaning ultimately shares the Latin source meaning finger. en.wikipedia.org
- Digital can be analyzed as digit + -al. en.wiktionary.org
- Digit has a numerical meaning. en.wiktionary.org
- A digital clock displays its reading as figures. en.wikipedia.org
- A digital meter displays numerical readings. elenco.com
- 3Electronic equipment and technology of the computerized kind, taken together as a whole.
Advertising budgets have shifted steadily toward digital over the past decade.
Newsrooms that ignored digital lost readers to online rivals.
UsageOften in shift to digital and switch to digital.
Less common meanings
- 4Relating to the fingers or toes; especially, carried out with a finger.
The surgeon performed a digital examination to feel for the lump.
Swelling in the digital joints is often an early sign of arthritis.
UsageMostly in medical phrases: digital examination, digital pressure.
- 5Short for digital watch: a watch that shows the time in numerals on a display rather than with hands.
He swapped his old analog watch for a sleek digital in the eighties.
She liked a digital because she could read it at a glance in the dark.
Note
A clipped noun: the adjective drops its watch and carries the whole meaning, taking the ordinary plural digitals. Amy Glasmeier's Manufacturing Time (2000) uses it for the whole product category, noting that traditional watchmakers "could not see much future in digitals." Context does the work here, since the same clipping also gives the informal word for digital art.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Amy Glasmeier wrote Manufacturing Time, published in 2000. guilford.com
- The book uses digitals for digital watches and says that traditional watchmakers could not see much future in them. en.wiktionary.org
- 6Short for digital art: art created or presented using computers and other digital technology.
Galleries are finally starting to exhibit digital alongside traditional paintings.
After years of painting in acrylics, she switched to digital and now sells prints of her work online.
UsageOften after in or to: work in digital, switch to digital.
- 7A finger, used playfully or as a joke.
- 8An option contract that pays a fixed, set amount if the underlying asset meets a condition at expiry, and nothing if it does not.
- 9Any one of the keys pressed to play a piano or a similar keyboard instrument.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Latin digitālis was formed from digitus ("finger, toe") with the suffix -alis and was borrowed into English. In English terms it equals digit plus -al, and digitalis is a doublet.