texting

noun

text·​ing ˈtek-stiŋ 

: the act or activity of sending text messages from one cell phone to another

When I moved to Chicago, I used a paper map that folded in your lap to navigate the city. There was no Internet, no e-mail, no texting … . A few people in the late eighties had giant cell phones that lived in tiny suitcases, and I saw some in movies.

—Amy Poehler

Texting freed a generation from the strictures and inconvenience (and awkwardness) of phone calls, while allowing people to be more loosely and constantly connected.

—Jenna Wortham

Examples of texting in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Google’s glasses run Android apps, essentially taking a lot of stuff that currently lives on a smartphone—maps, texting, news feeds—and putting it directly in front of your eyeballs. —Boone Ashworth, WIRED, 20 Dec. 2024

In my experience as a pediatrician, teens find other ways to communicate with each other, such as texting or even the occasional video phone call. —Alison Escalante, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024

Members of that friend group tried texting and direct-messaging Mangione, but no one heard back, the former classmate said. —Daniel Arkin, NBC News, 14 Dec. 2024

Gibbons-Shapiro said in many cases, the scam involves multiple people, many of them from Southeast Asia where human trafficking victims are also forced to ensnare victims through texting and fake financial websites. —Ruben Vives, Los Angeles Times, 12 Dec. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1999, in the meaning defined above