Unicode

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A universal computing standard that assigns a unique number to each character so text from nearly every writing system can be stored and displayed
2. An international character encoding system that lets computers represent letters, symbols and emoji from all the world's languages
3. A widely used digital standard for encoding, representing and handling text in almost every language and script

Etymology: The word names a character-encoding standard, and its name was built to state its purpose. "Unicode" was published as a draft proposal in 1988, and the name was meant to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. Each part does work: "uni-" signals one system for all text, and "code" refers to the mapping of characters to numbers that computers use to store and display them. The formation is a plain compound of the Latin-derived prefix "uni-", meaning "one", and the English noun "code". Nothing about it is borrowed from a distant language; the coiners simply joined two familiar elements to describe a single code meant to cover every writing system. The capitalised form is the standard's proper name, while the lowercase form is an alternative spelling used in running text.