Other forms: cables
A cable is the thick wire that carries power or data between things. Bundled, insulated, and always tangled behind the desk.
The word covers rope too, especially heavy steel rope, which is why suspension bridges hang on cables and a cable car runs on one. Television took the name from the wire that delivers it, so cable TV is simply television down a cable. Knitting has cables as well, the twisted rope-like pattern down a jumper. There is one dated sense left, since a cable was once a telegram sent along an undersea line.
1nouncableA thick insulated wire carrying electricity or signals.~72%
“The cable runs under the floorboards.”
2nounstrongA thick strong rope of wire.~28%
“The bridge hangs from two enormous cables.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
capulum — lasso, rope, halter
fro-nor
cable
Middle English
cable
English, today
cable
Recorded since c.1205 as Middle English cable, from fro-nor cable, from Latin capulum (“lasso, rope, halter”), from Latin capiō (“to take, seize”). Use of the term "cable" to refer to the USD/GBP exchange rate originated in the mid-19th century, when the exchange rate began to be transmitted across the Atlantic by a submarine communications cable.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA