application programming interface

noun

variants or less commonly application program interface
computing
: a set of rules that allows programmers to develop software for a particular operating system without having to be completely familiar with that operating system
To fix this problem, trustbusters have installed a provision forcing Microsoft to disclose more information about its so-called application programming interfaces, or APIs.Business Week
abbreviation API

Examples of application programming interface in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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Wealth platforms today are ecosystems, and application programming interfaces (APIs) are the glue that holds those ecosystems together. Bill Capuzzi, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025 Independent researcher Farzan Karimi first realized years ago that misconfigurations in application programming interfaces, or APIs, exposed streaming content to unauthorized access. Lily Hay Newman, Wired News, 8 Aug. 2025 OpenAI is releasing three different versions of the model for developers through its application programming interface, or API. Ashley Capoot, CNBC, 7 Aug. 2025 As TechRadar reports, the outage stemmed from a code issue in Service Control, part of Google’s application programming interfaces (APIs) management and policy checking system. John Kell, Fortune, 18 June 2025 See All Example Sentences for application programming interface

Word History

First Known Use

1968, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of application programming interface was in 1968

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Cite this Entry

“Application programming interface.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/application%20programming%20interface. Accessed 5 Sep. 2025.

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