Captioning

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The technique of generating on-screen text that represents spoken words and auditory cues in multimedia presentations
2. This involves creating written descriptions synchronized with video to ensure that auditory information is accessible to all viewers
3. The process of showing text on a screen to represent spoken dialogue or sounds in a video

Etymology: The noun "caption" has a surprising past: in Latin, "captio" meant deception or fraud, not a title. It came from the verb "capere," "to take, to seize," which also gave English "capture." The sense of seizing or taking hold was never far away, since a fraud is a kind of trap, and Middle English had "capcioun" for seizure or capture. The modern sense of a heading or label grew out of the idea of taking hold of an image's meaning and fixing it in words. Captioning, the present participle of the verb, now names the work of putting on-screen text to spoken words and sound effects, so that viewers who cannot hear can follow along.

Synonyms: subtitling, labeling