Other forms: remotes
Remote means far from towns, roads and other people. A cottage at the end of a rutted track with no bus and no shop; a weather station where the nearest neighbour is forty miles off.
The word is about being cut off, not only about distance: a village an hour from a city counts as remote if nothing goes there. Remote also means slight — a remote chance, a remote possibility, not the remotest idea. Applied to a person it means cold and distant in manner, a boss who keeps everyone at arm length. Since offices emptied it has taken on work as well: remote working, a remote team, logging in remotely. And the remote, short for remote control, is the thing that disappears down the side of the sofa.
1adjectiveremoteFar from towns and people; hard to reach.~43%
“They farm a remote valley in the north of the island.”
synonyms: isolated
2adjectiveslightVery slight or unlikely.~11%
“There is a remote chance of snow on Friday.”
3adjectivecoldCold and distant in manner.~2%
“He was polite but remote with everyone at the office.”
4adjectivedoneDone from a distance, away from an office or site.~33%
“The job is fully remote, with one meeting a month in person.”
5nounhandheldA handheld device for controlling a television or other machine.~11%
“The remote was under the cushion the whole time.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin remotus is the past participle of removēre, to remove, built from re- and movēre, to move. It came through Old French into Middle English with its meaning intact. A remote place is one that has been moved away.
Proto-Indo-European
*m(y)ewh₁-
Latin
remotus
Old French
remot
Middle English
remote
English, today
remote
Built from
From Middle English remote, from Old French remot, masculine, remote, feminine, from Latin remotus, past participle of removere (“to remove”), from re- + movere (“to move”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA