Digital means existing on computers and screens rather than on paper. A digital copy, digital photography, go digital.
Technically it means information stored as numbers, in discrete steps, against analogue, which is stored as a continuously varying quantity — a vinyl record is analogue and a compact disc is digital. That distinction is why digital copies do not degrade. Note digital divide, meaning unequal access to technology; digital native; and that digital originally meant to do with fingers, which is why a clock showing numbers is called digital.
1adjectivedigitalExisting on computers and screens rather than on paper.
“The whole archive was digital by about 2012.”
2adjectivestoringStoring information as discrete numbers rather than continuously.
“A digital copy is identical to the original every time.”
digital is a quality of being numeric or electronic.
Latin digitalis comes from digitus, a finger — the same root as digit, meaning both a finger and a numeral, because people counted on their fingers. Every digital device in the world is named after a hand.
Latin
digitālis
English, today
digital
Built from
Latin digitālis, from digitus (“finger, toe”) + -alis (“-al”), equivalent to digit + -al. a doublet of digitalis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA