install

Formsinstalls, installing, installed

Pluralinstalls

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To connect, set up, or prepare something so that it is ready for use.

   The city plans to install new traffic lights at the intersection.

   The technicians are installing solar panels on the roof this week.

   Similarfit, mount, erect, fix, put

   Oppositeremove, dismantle

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To transfer software onto a device's permanent storage and set it up so it is ready to run when needed.

   The IT department installs security updates on every laptop each month.

   Before you can install the software, you need administrator privileges.

   Similarload, deploy

   Oppositeuninstall, remove, delete

   Note

   Computing borrowed the hardware verb for a job with no screws or cables. It covers the hidden work of unpacking compressed files and writing first-run settings, and that work is what separates installing a program from merely copying or downloading it. Whole operating systems are installed as well as single applications, and the result is still the setting-up-for-use sense, applied to code instead of equipment.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To place someone officially in an office, rank, or position, often in a formal ceremony.

   The university will install its new president at a ceremony in October.

   Church leaders installed the new bishop before a crowd of thousands.

   Similarseat

   Oppositedepose, remove, oust, unseat

   Note

   The ceremonial sense keeps the word's roots in view. Medieval Latin īnstallō, 'put in place, establish', is built on stallum, a stall, from a Frankish word for a place or position, so to install someone is to give them their place. It usually takes as and often appears in the passive (installed as Chancellor), and its near synonym is seat. The position need not be public: E. J. Guerin's Mountain Charley (1861) has a wife installed as mistress of a house.

4. 4
   verbreflexivetransitive

   To establish or settle someone or something in a particular place or position.

   She installed herself at the kitchen table with her laptop and a pot of coffee.

   The colonial government sought to install loyal families in the new settlements.

   Similarsettle, ensconce, establish, plant, position

   Oppositedislodge, remove

   Note

   Here the verb usually turns back on its subject: people install themselves in a chair, a room, a shed. The reflexive carries a note of deliberate settling, even of digging in. A 1955 report in Railway Magazine tells of eight women who installed themselves in a New Zealand goods shed with knitting and food, and so held off a demolition crew. It is the same idea of place behind formal admission to office, with the ceremony removed.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable

   The process of setting up a software application on a device so it is ready to run.

   A clean install often fixes problems that updates can't.

   The server install failed halfway through and had to be restarted.

   Similarsetup

   Note

   Technical talk clipped this noun straight from the verb, so that where formal writing says installation, people at a keyboard say the install. It takes the adjectives of a job: a long install, a clean install, a failed one, one left running in the background. It fits conversation, forums and informal documentation, but in formal prose installation is the safer choice.

6. 6
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A copy of a software application that has been set up and is ready to run on a particular device.

   Her laptop still runs a ten-year-old install of the operating system.

   The two installs behaved differently because of their separate configuration files.

   Similarcopy, instance

   Note

   This noun names what the job leaves behind, where the process noun names the job itself. It refers to one particular configured copy, which can be local, customized, or compared with the out-of-the-box version. Because each install carries its own settings, two of them can behave differently even when they came from the same package. It belongs to the same informal register as its process twin.

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