Comcast

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large American media and telecommunications corporation that supplies cable television, broadband internet and telephone services
2. An American firm offering cable TV, high-speed internet and phone service to households and businesses across the United States
3. A major United States telecommunications business known for delivering cable television and home internet connections to customers

Etymology: Comcast is not an ordinary English word but a coinage, and its story is mostly a matter of corporate naming. The company began in 1963 as Pennsylvania Cable, a small operator in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the name we know came in 1969 when it was reorganized as Comcast, a blend of "communications" and "broadcast." The name was chosen to sound like a serious national communications firm rather than a local cable outfit, and it has since become a common noun-like shorthand for cable television providers in the United States. The first half of the name is the clearer one. "Com-" is a clipped form of "communications," a word that goes back through Old French to Latin "communicare," meaning "to share" or "to impart." The second half, "-cast," comes from "broadcast," itself a 1920s-era extension of the older sense of scattering seed across a field, which broadcasting borrowed for sending signals over the air. Put together, the name signals sending information widely, which is exactly the business the company wanted to project.