antivirus

Definition

Software designed to detect, prevent, and remove malicious programs from your computer, essentially a digital immune system that's perpetually fighting the latest cyber diseases. It's the software you install, immediately forget about, then wonder why it's slowing down your computer during important presentations. The security industry's most successful ongoing subscription model, selling protection from threats they help make scary.

Example Usage

My antivirus software blocked 47 threats this month, though 46 of them were probably just cookies from sketchy recipe websites.

Source: Common IT terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

DevOps

A culture where developers and operations teams work together in harmony, much like cats and dogs would if you put them in the same room and told them to collaborate. In practice, it means one person does both jobs for the salary of neither.

💻 Tech / IT

Advanced

G502 Hero

A gaming mouse from Logitech that has achieved cult status among PC gamers who have very strong opinions about peripheral devices. Featuring customizable weights and more buttons than a nuclear control panel, it's become the subject of surprisingly passionate debates. Because apparently people care deeply about their mice.

💻 Tech / IT

Advanced

quantum

The smallest indivisible unit of a given quantity, or in buzzword terms, whatever makes your tech startup sound 500% more impressive to investors. In physics, it's the fundamental discrete quantity of any physical property; in business, it's whatever you stick in front of 'computing' or 'leap' to sound revolutionary. Real quantum mechanics is complicated; fake quantum marketing is everywhere.

💻 Tech / IT

Intermediate

1337

"Leet" or "elite" in early internet speak, where numbers replace letters because hackers in the '90s thought this was peak cool. Originally signified actual skill in coding or gaming, now mainly used ironically or by people stuck in 2003. The digital equivalent of a tribal armband tattoo.

💻 Tech / IT

Intermediate

impedance

The electrical world's way of saying 'resistance to change,' literally. It's the total opposition to alternating current flow in a circuit, combining resistance with the fancier reactances that make engineers feel important. Think of it as the circuit's stubborn refusal to let electricity flow freely, measured in ohms and blamed for countless troubleshooting headaches.

💻 Tech / IT

Beginner

Gameboy Advance

Nintendo's 32-bit handheld gaming console released in 2001 that revolutionized portable gaming with its landscape design and backwards compatibility. The GBA turned every long car ride into a Pokémon training session and every classroom into a secret gaming arena.

💻 Tech / IT

Translate This Term

See “antivirus” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Beginner

sytycd

so you think you can dance...