Other forms: downloads, downloaded, downloading
To download something is to copy it from the internet onto your own device. You tap a link and the film, the boarding pass or the app lands on your phone.
The direction is the whole point: a download comes to you, an upload goes out from you. It is a noun as well — the download stalled at ninety per cent, a free download, download speed — and the copied file sits in a folder called Downloads. The forms are regular: download, downloaded, downloading. People download onto each other too, in loose speech: 'let me download you on the meeting' means dumping everything at once. You download a file, an app, a song, a podcast; you stream a film when you watch it without keeping a copy.
1verbdownloadTo copy a file from the internet or a network onto your own device.
“I downloaded the tickets before the train left.”
2nouncopiedA file copied from the internet, or the act of copying one.
“The download took twenty minutes on the hotel wifi.”
3verbeverythingTo tell someone everything you know about something, all at once.
“Give me five minutes and I'll download the whole story.”
Download is young enough to date. The verb turns up around 1962 in a Texas newspaper, the Wichita Falls Times, and the noun in Scientific American in 1977 — both of them before there was much for an ordinary person to download.
Middle English
doun
English
down
English, today
download
Built from
From down- + load. Verbal form first appears c. 1962 in the Wichita Falls (Texas) Times. Nominal form first appears c. 1977 in Scientific American. down comes from Middle English doun. From Middle English doun, doune (“down”), from Old English dūne (“down”), aphetic form of adūne (“down, downward”), from earlier ofdūne (“down”) literally “off the hill”, from of (“of, off of”) + dūn (“hill, mount, dune, down”). More at Etymology 2 below. For the development from directional phrases to prepositions, compare dene, dāle, whence dal. Compare also stq, del. Cognate with Scots doon (“down”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA