- This term was created by Mac as a form to display and clearly put forth their innovations with the touchpad in their apple products. As everything is moving away from the keyboard, the decrease in keys requires an increase in "touch" functions, resulting in multi-touch systems. This word compounds multi, meaning many, and touch, the action required to operate the technologies, putting forth that there will be many ways to operate technology with the use of touch.
multi-touch9
compounding adjective
describing a touchpad or apparatus that operates with multiple finger commands. For example, sliding on the touchpad to the left with one finger will have a different effect than sliding to the left with two fingers.
Etymology : hyphenated compound of multi and touch
Source : "Jeff Han demos 82-inch Multi-touch display, iMac-sized version too." New York Times, 2011
Last modified: 5 December 2011