Wireless Etymology

Wire comes to us from the the Old English word "wīr" and the Old High German "wiara" referring to fine gold work, probably from the Proto-Germanic "wiraz" meaning to twist. Wire was a noun, but it became used as a verb in the sense "wire a message" in the mid 1800s with the rise of the telegraph. It is in that sense that the radio is a "wireless" and my PC is connected via WiFi. But when did wire become a verb as into wire a message? In 1863 the British declared in the Telegraph act the following

"...the term ' telegraph' means a wire or wires used for the purpose of telegraphic communication, with any casing, coating, tube, or pipe inclosing the same, and any apparatus connected therewith for the purpose of telegraphic communication."

In a legal sense above the telegraph is just a bunch of wires for sending messages. (It's sort of like the internet being a system of tubes.) But already the message is being conflated with the wiring instead of the technology or the data. This is where the other senses of wire start to emerge. So it appears that first the message becomes "a wire" then, the act of sending that message becomes the act "to wire."But it's not that clean cut. The only hard line here is the invention of the telegraph in 1809 before which no messages were sent over wires of any kind.

The book The Progressive Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Fallows printed the following definitions in 1885:

Wire (wir):  To send by telegraph, as a message ; to telegraph ; as in wire a reply.  To communicate by means of  the telegraph; to telegraph ;    
Wire (wir), f. i. To communicate by means of the telegraph;

But common usage in print was erratic. In 1891 J. Bucknall Smith wrote the book  Wire, it's Manufacture And Uses. It was a canonical book on the production of and the use of what he still called "wire rope" even when describing braided electrical wire. Chapter IV "Electrical Conductors" is entirely about it's use for  electrical an telegraph applications.  Throughout the book wire is used only as a noun. Even when the wire was installed the wire was "drawn" the building was not "wired".  In the 1898 book A Dictionary of Electrical Words, Terms and Phrases by Edwin James Houston it still appears only as a noun as it often still did in periodicals. I assume therefore that use as a verb was still uncommon until the early 1900s.

1874 - Message of the Governor of Virginia to the General Assembly (1/1/1874)
"At once I wired his excellency, the governor of West Virginia, for permission to transport troops through that State..."

1877 -Arctic Expeditions from British and Foreign Shores, David Murray Smith
"Lieutenant Hamilton "wired " a message to the tender, inquiring whether Hartnell had come on board."

1882 - Chambers Journals, August
"But a day or two actually going by, and she hearing no more, she wired a message of inquiry to the offices."

1885 - The Mountain Kingdom, David Lawson Johnstone
"At the first telegraph-station I wired a message to my mother, telling her of our safety."

1888 - Votes & Proceedings New South Wales Parliament (8/23/1888)
"Instructions were sent by wire on 20th instant"

1892 - Proceedings of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen
" Mr. Clark immediately wired a message to Trinidad : " Return to work. Send a committee to my office at Omaha and I will settle your grievances."

1894 - A Born Soldier, John Strange Winter
"I will send a wire to Winthrop now. Perhaps you will send it off for me."

1894 - The Greek Madonna, C. W. de Lyon Nichols
"Madeline could not have wired a message to a more consenting partner..."

1894 - The Maiden's Progress, Violet Hunt
"Portrait painter, you know! He is in the office. Shall I send the wire for you?" 

1895 - Pall Mall Magazine, February
"...yet in the morning, after reconsidering the question the author actually did send the wire to his brother instead." 

1897 - McBride's Magazine, August
 "Very good Sir. I will send the wire off at once."

1899 - The Lady's Realm, July
"Griffiths received the news calmly, gave his orders in a curt, confident way, then hurried down to the railway station to send the wire to Himla"

Broadcasting Etymology

Lee de Forest gets a lot of credit for a lot of things; much of it due to the press campaign he waged at the end of his life trying to lobby his way into history books.  But there is one thing that he gets near unequivocal credit for: the word "broadcasting" used in the context of radio. More here.

broad·cast (brôdkst)

v. broad·cast or broad·cast·ed, broad·cast·ing, broad·casts

1. To transmit a radio or television program

2. To send out or communicate, especially by radio or television.

3. To make known over a wide area: broadcast rumors.

4. To sow seed over a wide area, especially by hand.

The term originates in the 1700s as a reference to the spreading of seeds as a compound word that describes the actual throwing of seed broad + cast. It was literally the wide swing of the hand to spread seed over a large area, a wasteful technique used in the planing of grain. in fact modern mechanical contrivances that mimic this motion are called "broadcast seeders." The modern meaning can be definitively dated to 1921 according to most texts. But de Forest was using it in his journals as early as 1907. I've found uses in radio before that date as well. You can see some of them use it in a metaphorical way as it may have been outside the radio context, but it serves to show how the word transmuted over time. The clear change is when the writer uses broadcast as a verb. One instance even uses it twice, once in each sense.

1920 - Hearings before the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries... From the statement of Mr. S. M. Kintner of the International Radio Telegraph Co.
"... The press associations do not want their news handed to people who do not pay them for it, as expressed by the one that objected to our broadcasting the news delivered by them to one of their subscribers.

October 1920 - The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - Volume 1
"The caution was broadcast by wireless and placed vessel masters on the alert."

1918 - Report of the Commissioner of Education made to the Secretary of the Interior...
"During this period 36 messages of an average length of 1,500 words were broadcast, released twice each week, on Monday and Thursday evenings.

September 1918 - Popular Mechanics
"By broadcasting is meant the sending of messages so that any vessel, battleship, or merchantman, with a properly tuned instrument, can receive it."

1915 - Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Vol. 3 
"On the Pacific coast, time signals are sent broadcast to sea, thru the Naval stations at Mare Island, Eureka, San Diego, in California, and at North Head, Washington."

1915 - Wireless World, Vol.  By Wireless Society of London
"At 6 p.m. (75th Meridian time) ice information will be sent broadcast for the benefit of vessels using 600 metre wave-length. .."

1913 - West Indies Pilot, Volume 1,  By The United States Hydrographic Office
"Information concerning wrecks, derelicts, and other dangerous obstructions to navigation whenever received from the Hydrographic Office or from a branch Hydrographic Office is sent broadcast four times daily, viz, at 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., and 8 p.m., local (standard) time of station.

August 1913 - Report of the Hydrographer to the Bureau of Navigation
"...A great deal of this has been concerning dangers to navigation, which has been sent broadcast by the naval radio station at Arlington and by some of those on the coast. This method of broadcasting information concerning dangers to navigation is of great use to shipping and is greatly appreciated."

March 1909 - Popular Mechanics
"Sixty-five miles from shore the stricken steamer flashed electrical calls for help broadcast across the ocean."

1000 ways to say radio

There are 203 sovereign nations in the world. You can fudge that number either way a few digits depending on who your nation of origin does or does not formally recognize bu that's about right. I tried to cover at least all of the 30 most commonly spoken languages here but did miss a few. Punjabi, Javanese, Marathi, and Burmese. There are approximately 6,600 languages spoken in the world today, and almost all of them have a word for radio, since radio is truly heard everywhere.

Arabic: راديو
Bulgarian: Радио
Cantonese: Sau jam gei
Chinese: 收音机
Czech: rádio
Danish: radio
Dutch: radio
Estonian: raadio
Finnish: radio
French: radio
German: radio
Greek: Ραδιόφωνο
Hausa: rediyo
Hebrew: רדיו
Hindi: रेडियो
Hungarian: rádió
Italian: radio
Japanese: ラジオ〔無線〕
Kannada: aakaashavaaNi
Korean: 라디오
Maltese: radju
Norwegian: radio
Persian: راديو
Polish: radio
Portugese: rádio
Pashto: راديو
Romanian: radio
Russian: радио
Slovak: rádio
Spanish: radio
Serbian: radio
Swedish: radio
Tamil: வானொலி
Thai: วิทยุ
telugu: reeDiyoo
Turkish: Radyo
Ukranian: радіо
Urdu: ریڈیو
Vietnamese: đài phát thanh

Disc Jockey Etymology

Everybody says that the term “disc jockey” was coined in the 1940s, but nobody wants to own up to coining the term. The guilty party turns out to be Walter Winchell, a writer for the New York Daily Mirror and radio host. Winchell's column appeared in almost 2,000 newspapers And on the air he dished gossip at a purported average of 197 words per minute.

He started out writing jokes free-lance for Billboard. He must have been funny because he ended up as a columnist for the The Vaudeville News. By the 1920s he was a professional Journalist writing a gossip column 'Your Broadway and Mine'' dedicated to harassing vaudeville entertainers. He himself had been a vaudeville entertainer with the Gus Edwards Newsboys Sextet as was his wife. Apparently he left the stage somewhat bitter. I'm not sure where in there he Americanized his real name from Walter Weinschel.

Walt made his radio debut in 1930 on WCBS-AM. His big move came two years later on the NBC’s Blue Network when he was shuffled onto The Jergens Journal, a popular news program. That program mixed in entertainment news with hard news giving him the opening to start talking trash. While his column was at the peak of it's popularity in 1937. (some sources cite 1934) He was used it to refer to fellow radioman Martin Block as a "Disc Jockey". Block spun records on the program "the Make Believe Ballroom" on WNEW. Block played up the the illusion that the program was broadcast from a ballroom. Martin Block went on to become a wildly popular DJ. The Make-Believe Ballroom idea was actually stolen from another DJ named Al Jarvis.


By the 1960s Winchell's career was in the tank. He's mistakenly supported McCarthy and it stained him for life. His radio show was canceled, and the daily Mirror went under. Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar were openly mocking him and his son committed suicide. He died a recluse of cancer in 1972. Id' also like to note that he exchanged correspondence for decades with America's most famous republican cross-dresser, J. Edgar Hoover. More here. Winchell was inducted into the radio hall of fame in November, 2004.

The Word "Radio" Itself

I've spent over a year now telling you all about the events that led up to you listening to your radio. Where tubes, transistors, DJs, formats and all manner of things radio originate. I realized only this morning I had not yet discussed the origin of the word radio itself.

It has many definitions, so I will dryly begin there:

ra·di·o (rd-)n. pl. ra·di·os
1. The wireless transmission through space of electromagnetic waves in the approximate frequency range from 10 kilohertz to 300,000 megahertz.
2. Communication of audible signals encoded in electromagnetic waves.
3. Transmission of programs for the public by radio broadcast.
4. An apparatus used to transmit radio signals; a transmitter.
-An apparatus used to receive radio signals; a receiver.
-A complex of equipment capable of transmitting and receiving radio signals.
-A station for radio transmitting.
-A radio broadcasting organization or network of affiliated organizations.
5. The radio broadcasting industry.
6. A message sent by radio.

The word radio isn't much older than radio itself. It began to appear in 1907, abstracted from earlier combinations using the word such as radiophone (1881) and radio-telegraphy (1898). These words were only marginally older, and themselves originate with the liberal use of the prefix "rad" from the word radiation.

The root word Radiation is much older, coming into common use in 1555 as an Anglo adaptation of the Greek verb radiare , meaning "to shine or beam." That word comes from The earlier Latin Radius, meaning "staff, spoke of a wheel, beam of light." Its origin is unknown but may be the older Latin word radix meaning root. Possibly the Sanskrit word vardhate "rises, makes grow," or the ancient Greek ardis meaning "sharp point."

*The term Wireless dates back only to 1894 beginning as a direct reference to the lack of a telegraph wire. By 1903 it was being used to refer to radio, and radios.

The first use of the word radio to mean "radio-receiver" was only in 1917, and its use meaning "broadcasting medium" only in 1922! Prior to that the term Wireless remained far more dominant. It was not until WWII that the military's preference for the word radio over wireless changed the preference.

So that's it. Radio begins as a reference to wheel spokes and now has nothing to do with wheels spokes, beams of light, or sharp points... except for car radios, fiber optics routers, and .. dang I cant think of a pointy thing.