laptop

Plurallaptops

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A portable personal computer with a built-in screen and keyboard that folds shut for carrying.

   He closed his laptop and slipped it into his bag.

   Modern laptops weigh far less than the bulky models sold in the 1990s.

   Similarnotebook

   Oppositedesktop

   Note

   Named for where it sits: lap plus top, patterned on desktop, so the machine takes its name from its resting place rather than from anything it does. The name has had close neighbors. In Upgrading and Fixing Laptops For Dummies (2006), Corey Sandler notes that laptops and notebooks came to differ by no more than an inch or two. That is why the two words now overlap so much in ordinary use.

2. 2
   adjective

   Designed to be used while resting on a person's lap rather than on a desk or table.

   He set up a laptop stand that rests comfortably across his knees.

   The store sells padded laptop trays for people who work from bed.

   Oppositedesktop

   Note

   The adjective stands before a noun and has no degrees: a laptop machine, never a more laptop one. BYTE wrote of laptop portables in 1984, PC Magazine of a laptop machine in 1988, and Popular Science of a laptop PC in 1999. The everyday noun is this adjective with its noun dropped, so laptop computer became simply laptop.

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