Uploads

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process involving the transfer of digital files from an individual’s device to a cloud service for storage or sharing purposes
2. The act of sending digital data from a local device to a remote server or platform for access or backup
3. Moving files or information from one computer or device to another, often over the internet, for safe keeping or distribution

Etymology: "Uploads" is the third-person singular present form of "upload," so its history is that of the verb itself. The verb is a compound of "up" and "load." "Load" goes back to Old English "lad," meaning a way or course, which later came to mean a burden carried along a path, and "up" is the ancient directional word for movement toward a higher place. Put together, the two describe lifting a burden onto something higher, a sense the verb kept from its earliest uses. The meaning shifted sharply once computing arrived. The older sense of "upload" concerned moving data from a peripheral device to a central computer, a usage that was already in technical use by the time personal computers spread. In the internet era the direction reversed in popular thinking: rather than pulling data up to a mainframe, people began sending files from their own machines out across networks to remote servers. That is the sense the verb carries today, so a word built from "lifting a load" now describes pushing your files out into the cloud.

Synonyms: transfers, submissions, imports