Other forms: updated, updates, updating
An update is a newer version of a program that fixes faults and adds features. Install the update, a software update, the latest update.
Security updates are the ones that matter most, because they close holes attackers already know about. Automatic updates are now standard and are switched off by roughly nobody who should. As a verb it means to bring something up to date: update the records, update me. As a noun it also means fresh information: an update on the situation, give us an update.
1nounupdateA newer version of a program that fixes and improves it.
“My phone installed an update overnight that fixed the battery problem.”
2nounfreshFresh information about a situation.
“There has been no update for about three weeks.”
3verbbringTo bring something up to date.
“Nobody had updated the records since about 2011.”
update is a bringing up to date.
The word is up plus date, formed in twentieth-century English on the model of up-to-date. It is a back-formation: the adjective came first and the verb was cut out of it.
Hebrew
דֶּקֶל — date palm
Arabic
دَقَل — variety of date palm
Ancient Greek
δάκτυλος — finger
oc-pro-old
datil
Latin
dactylus
Old French
date
Middle English
date
English
date
English, today
update
From up- + date. Earliest usages from 1940s (see Citations). date comes from Middle English date, from Old French date, datil, datille, from Latin dactylus (likely via oc-pro-old datil), from Ancient Greek δάκτυλος (“finger”) (from the resemblance of the date to a human finger), probably a folk-etymological alteration of a word from a sem source such as Arabic دَقَل (“variety of date palm”) or Hebrew דֶּקֶל (“date palm”). a doublet of dactyl and dactylus. Displaced native Old English fingeræppel, literally "finger-apple".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA