Other forms: databases
A database is the organised store where a program keeps its information. A customer database, query the database, the database went down.
It is structured rather than a pile: information is arranged in tables, records and fields so that it can be found and combined. That structure is what makes it a database rather than a folder of files. The word is now general enough that non-technical people use it freely: put it on the database, we have it on the database. Note the compounds database administrator and relational database, and that data is the plural inside the word, though nobody treats it that way.
1noundatabaseAn organised electronic store of information.
“The police searched their database for the car's registration number.”
database is a store of information.
From data + base. From data + base.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA