Other forms: notifications
A notification is the banner and the little ping your phone gives you when something has happened. Twelve of them stacked on the lock screen in the morning, a red dot on an app, one at two a.m. from a game asking you to come back.
You turn notifications on and off, mute them, or clear them, and push notifications are the ones an app sends without being asked. Behind the phone use sits the older, heavier one: notification is the formal act of telling someone officially. You give written notification of a change of address, and a contract may demand notification within fourteen days. The verb is notify — you notify someone OF something, or notify them that something has happened. Notification is the word a form uses; notice is the word you use in the kitchen.
1nounnotificationA message that appears on a phone or computer screen to tell you something has happened.
“She silenced her phone to stop the notifications during dinner.”
2nounactThe act of telling someone about something officially.
“The council requires notification of any change to the building.”
3nounwrittenAn official written message telling you something.
“A notification arrived saying the appointment had been moved.”
notification is a message.
Notification came by the usual French road: Middle French notification, Old French notificacion, and behind those the Latin notificatio. It spent centuries as a paperwork word, the letter that tells you a decision has been made about you. Only in the last twenty years has it become the thing that lights up a screen in your pocket.
Latin
nōtificātiō
Old French
notificacion
Middle French
notification
English, today
notification
From Middle French notification, from Old French notificacion, from Latin nōtificātiō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
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