Other forms: tablets
A tablet is the flat touch-screen computer, bigger than a phone, smaller than a laptop. Read on a tablet, a cheap tablet, charge the tablet.
The word is far older than the device: a tablet was a flat slab for writing on, which is what the Ten Commandments were carved into, and a tablet of medicine is a pressed flat disc. All three senses come from the same flat shape.
1noundeviceA flat touch-screen computer.
“She reads the news on her tablet every morning.”
2nounpressedA pressed flat disc of medicine.
“Take one tablet twice a day with food.”
tablet is a flat object.
Also accepted in games: ipad
Old French tablete is a diminutive of table, from Latin tabula, a board or flat slab.
Middle English
tablet
English, today
tablet
Built from
From Middle English tablet. From Middle English tablet, from Old French tablete (Modern French tablette), diminutive of table (“table”). Compare table, -et.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA