Other forms: networks, networking, networked
A network is a set of computers connected so that they can share information and equipment. A home network, the office network, the network is down.
The word covers the physical connections and the arrangement together. Outside computing it names any connected system: a rail network, a network of roads, a network of contacts. In broadcasting a network is a group of stations carrying the same programmes, which is the American sense of the major networks. As a verb, to network means to build professional contacts deliberately — networking event, networking with people at a conference.
1nounnetworkComputers connected so they can share information.
“The whole network went down for two hours.”
2nounsystemA connected system of routes, lines or people.
“The rail network has barely changed since 1960.”
3verbbuildTo build professional contacts.
“He spent the whole conference networking and heard none of it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
network is a connected system.
The word is a straightforward compound of net and work, first used of literal netting — thread worked into a net. Everything else is metaphor stacked on that image, which is why a rail network and a social network share a shape rather than a substance.
From net + work; the nonliteral sense and its subsenses are extended from the literal sense; they are now the dominant senses. Cognate with German Netzwerk.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA