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

Just Tuesday, a U.S. Department of Education employee who oversees their grant had given his district the go-ahead to add a telehealth texting service for students. —Cory Turner, NPR, 1 May 2025

Eder Ribeiro, director of global incident response at TransUnion, says emptying someone’s life savings is the primary goal, but hackers can still derive secondary value from the texting. —Kevin Williams, CNBC, 25 Apr. 2025

The State Department recommends texting, which may work better than calling from abroad. —Rebekah Riess, CNN Money, 5 Apr. 2025

Marlinspike merged two existing open source apps, one for texting and one for voice calls, to create Signal. —Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 25 Mar. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1999, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for texting

• bowstring
• coiling
• downswing
• drawstring
• forewing
• hamstring
• lapwing
• mainspring
• offspring
• plaything
• shoestring
• upswing