wireless

[wahyuh r-lis] /ˈwaɪər lɪs/

adjective

having no wire.

noting or pertaining to any of various devices that are operated with or actuated by electromagnetic waves.

Chiefly British, radio.

noun

wireless telegraphy or telephony.

a wireless telegraph or telephone, or the like.

any system or device, as a cellular phone, for transmitting messages or signals by electromagnetic waves.

a wireless message.

Chiefly British, radio.

verb (used with object), verb (used without object)

to telegraph or telephone by wireless.

Origin

1890-95; wire + -less

Related forms

wirelessly, adverb

wirelessness, noun

prewireless, adjective

Examples from the web for wireless

In its place, radio communications would provide instant, long-distance wireless communication.
Each cashier, after ringing up and bagging an order, pushes a button that sends a wireless signal to the screen.
Similarly, our equipment allows us to reveal and represent topographies of wireless networks.
The cheap wireless plans seemed too good to be true.
Might let a device's wireless link go low-power sooner.
If any hazardous stress occurs, data sent from the wireless sensors will sound an alarm from a nearby laptop computer.
Charges will appear on your wireless bill, or be deducted from your prepaid balance.
Unplug the network cable and disable any wireless networking.
In multiple trials, she hid a wireless speaker in a fake tree trunk near each group of elephants, then drove away.
They roam loose with a wireless link chain fence and then are put in their cages for the night in the shed.

British Dictionary definitions for wireless

wireless

/ˈwaɪəlɪs/

adjective

communicating without connecting wires or other material contacts: wireless networks, wireless internet connection

noun

(mainly Brit, old-fashioned) another word for radio

Derived Forms

wirelessly, adverb

Word Origin and History for wireless

1894, as a type of telegraph, from wire (n.) + -less. In reference to radio broadcasting, attested from 1903, subsequently superseded by radio.

wireless in Technology

networking
A term describing a computer network where there is no physical connection (either copper cable or fibre optics) between sender and receiver, but instead they are connected by radio.
Applications for wireless networks include multi-party teleconferencing, distributed work sessions, personal digital assistants, and electronic newspapers. They include the transmission of voice, video, images, and data, each traffic type with possibly differing bandwidth and quality-of-service requirements. The wireless network components of a complete source-destination path requires consideration of mobility, hand-off, and varying transmission and bandwidth conditions. The wired/wireless network combination provides a severe bandwidth mismatch, as well as vastly different error conditions. The processing capability of fixed vs. mobile terminals may be expected to differ significantly. This then leads to such issues to be addressed in this environment as admission control, capacity assignment and hand-off control in the wireless domain, flow and error control over the complete end-to-end path, dynamic bandwidth control to accommodate bandwidth mismatch and/or varying processing capability.
Usenet newsgroup news:comp.std.wireless.
(1995-02-27)