Hi everyone.
I was just reading an article over at treocentral and read the following: “Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity…”
I see this all the time and usually just ignore it, but it is worth correcting.
Wi-Fi does not stand for wireless fidelity. It actually does not stand for anything; at most it is a joke on Hi-Fi. Phil Belanger of the Wi-Fi Alliance has stated this publicly. There are many references to this, one is at Wikipedia.
And besides, if it did indeed stand for Wireless Fidelity, what would the term mean? Fidelity, from the Latin fidelitas for "faithfulness," means loyalty, attentiveness, or accuracy of reproduction. Even this last makes no sense, because what is Wi-Fi reproducing?
Wi-Fi is like Kodak: a word that means nothing but sounds good.
