personal digital assistant
noun
Simple meaning
A hand-held computer, mostly used as an organizer.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pursihnihldihjuhtuhluhsihstuhntSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɝsɪnɪldɪdʒətələsɪstənt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
dated
A hand-held computer, mostly used as an organizer.
dated
A lightweight consumer electronic device that looks like a hand-held computer but instead performs specific tasks; can serve as a diary or a personal database or a telephone or an alarm clock etc.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A hand-held computer, mostly used as an organizer.
Used this way, personal digital assistant is an older-sounding word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a computing use: it carries a fixed technical meaning inside software and systems work.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Dated
- Connotation
- Old-fashioned
- Usage feel
- Dated in modern speech
Where it naturally appears
- Technology
- Technical/specialist writing
- Business/professional
- Historical writing
Usage note
This meaning still makes sense to most readers, but it sounds a generation behind current usage.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.