big data
noun
Did you know?
Big data is a new addition to our language, but exactly how new is not an easy matter to determine. A 1980 paper by Charles Tilly provides an early documented use of big data, but Tilly wasn't using the word in the exact same way we use it today; rather, he used the phrase "big-data people" to refer to historians engaged in data-rich fields such as cliometrics. Today, big data can refer to large data sets or to systems and solutions developed to manage such large accumulations of data, as well as for the branch of computing devoted to this development. Francis X. Diebold, a University of Pennsylvania economist, who has written a paper exploring the origin of big data as a term, a phenomenon, and a field of study, believes the term "probably originated in lunch-table conversations at Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) in the mid 1990s…."
Examples of big data in a Sentence
Nellie Andreeva, Deadline, 9 Apr. 2025
The company, which builds software for big data analytics companies, earlier this month reported revenue of $828 million for the fourth quarter — a 36% jump year over year.
—Josh Fellman, Quartz, 12 Feb. 2025
Large SaaS providers integrating AI into their platforms (Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP) and AI-native firms specializing in big data (Palantir, Databricks, Snowflake).
—Rajat Sharma, Forbes, 24 Mar. 2025
Turning big data into personal connections The process of obtaining practical inferences from extensive marketing data depends on a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning together with automation systems.
—Chris Gallagher, USA TODAY, 18 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for big data
Cite this Entry
“Big data.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/big%20data. Accessed 30 Apr. 2025.
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