Digite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. To perform the action of entering or keying in numbers or characters on a digital device ; to count or enumerate using fingers ; to operate or interact with something by using one's fingers
2. Engaging in the input of information on an electronic interface ; employing the fingers for the purpose of counting or indicating numbers ; manipulating objects through finger movements
3. The act of typing data into an electronic system ; using fingers for the purpose of tallying or numbering ; handling or utilizing something with one's digits (fingers)

Etymology: "Digite" is a noun meaning the keying in of numbers, and its roots lie in the Latin word for finger. Latin "digitus" meant finger or toe, and from it English took "digit" in the late 1500s for a finger or toe, and also for a single numeral, since the fingers were the first counting tool. The sense of the single figures 0 to 9 followed from that counting use. The noun "digite" is a much later and rarer formation, built on "digit" as a verb. Keying numbers into a machine, a calculator or a keypad, was the sort of activity that arose with 20th-century data entry, so the term belongs to that technical setting rather than to any old Latin or Greek stock.

Synonyms: digit, finger, toe, phalange, appendage