upload

Formsuploads, uploading, uploaded

Pluraluploads

1. 1
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To send data across a network to another computer, especially to an internet server.

   Researchers upload their datasets to a shared repository at the end of each week.

   The backup uploads automatically every night at midnight.

   Similartransfer, send, post, submit

   Oppositedownload

   Note

   A computing word built from up- + load, where the direction is the whole point: data travels up to a remote server, and its opposite, download, brings it back down. It takes an object (upload a photo to the site) or stands alone (the backup uploads overnight). How quickly it happens depends on a connection's upstream bandwidth, not the speed advertised for downloading.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An instance of transferring data or files to a server or another computer on a network.

   The site limits each upload to two gigabytes.

   Several large uploads slowed the office network on Friday afternoon.

   Similartransfer

   Oppositedownload

3. 3
   verbCanadatransitive

   To give a higher level of government both responsibility for a public asset or service and authority over it.

   City councilors voted to upload ambulance services to the county.

   The state uploaded responsibility for the courts from county governments decades ago.

   Similartransfer

   Oppositedownload, devolve

   Note

   Canadian political vocabulary borrows the picture behind the data-transfer verb: up means toward the higher level of government. The asset or service is the object, as in CBC News reporting that Ontario would not be uploading the DVP or Gardiner Expressway. Outside Canada, readers may expect files rather than highways, so a clarifying phrase helps.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3