Other forms: links, linked, linking
A link is the underlined or coloured text that takes you to another page when you click it. Click the link, send me the link, a broken link.
The full term is hyperlink, and the address it points to is a URL. Everyday phrases include broken link, dead link, link in the bio, and share the link. The older sense is a ring in a chain, and from it come the figurative ones: a link between two things, a weak link, missing link. As a verb, to link is to connect: link the two accounts, linked to the case.
1nounlinkText or an image that takes you to another page when clicked.
“The link had expired by the time she opened the email.”
synonyms: hyperlink, URL
2nounconnectionA connection between two things.
“There is no proven link between the two events.”
3verbconnectTo connect two things.
“The two accounts were linked from the start.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
link is a connection.
Also accepted in games: hyperlink, url
Old Norse hlenkr meant a ring or bond. The chain link came first, the abstract connection followed, and the web link arrived in the 1960s as a metaphor from the same chain — which is why the internet's vocabulary is full of chains and webs.
Proto-Germanic
*hlankiz — ring; bond; fettle; fetter
Old Norse
*hlenkr
Old English
hlenċe
Middle English
linke
English, today
link
Built from
From Middle English linke, lenke, from a merger of Old English hlenċe, hlenċa (“ring; chainlink”) and Old Norse hlenkr, hlekkr (“ring; chain”); both from Proto-Germanic hlankiz (“ring; bond; fettle; fetter”), from Proto-Germanic hlankaz (“bendsome, flexible”), from Proto-Indo-European kleng-, klenk- (“to bend; twist; wind”). Used in English since the 14th century. Related to lank. 2 Cognate with Low German Lenk (“link”), Danish lænke (“chain; link”), ovd lekk (“link”), Icelandic hlekkur (“link”), Norwegian Bokmål lenke (“chain; link”), Norwegian Nynorsk lenke, lenkje (“chain; link”), Swedish länk (“chain; link”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA