Cookied

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Stored data on a user's device by a website to remember preferences or login information
2. Placed small pieces of information in a browser to track or personalize a user's web experience
3. Sent digital tokens from a web server to a user's system to maintain session or personalize content

Etymology: The sweet biscuit and the browser file share a surprisingly unglamorous ancestor: "cookie" comes from Dutch "koekie", a diminutive of "koek" meaning "cake," and it is not related to the English verb "cook." The computing sense came much later, from a phrase rather than a flavour. "Magic cookie" was a term for a packet of data passed between programs, a token whose contents the receiving program simply handed back unopened, and the name stuck when web browsers adopted the idea to store small pieces of information on a user's machine. "Cookied" is simply the past tense and past participle of that verb, formed by adding the regular "-ed" ending to "cookie" used as a verb. To say a site cookied a visitor is to say it placed such a token on the visitor's system, typically so that the site could recognise that visitor on later pages or tailor what it showed them.