Cyber-

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Grammarist

Cyber- is a prefix that has gained popularity since the middle of the twentieth century. We will examine the meaning of the prefix cyber-, where it came from and some examples of its use in words and sentences.

Cyber- is a prefix that designates something pertaining to computers, virtual reality and electronic communication. The prefix cyber- was first used in this capacity in the word cybernetics, a term coined by mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s to denote machines and biological entities that run on diagnosing feedback. Starting in the 1960s, many words were combined with the prefix cyber- in order to denote things that were connected with computers, a few are still common words today. Some of these words are  cyberspace, cyberpunk and cybersecurity. Adding the prefix cyber- to any word lets the listener know that you are speaking about something that only exists online or in virtual reality. The prefix cyber- is sometimes simply added to the beginning of a word with no space between the words, sometimes added with a hyphen between cyber and the root word, and sometimes left to stand as a separate word.

Examples

Instead, this nondescript little town in Jharkhand’s Jamtara district is often frequented by police from different States: it has emerged as one of the biggest hubs of cybercrime in the country. (The HIndu)

When cyber-security professionals were polled recently at their annual BlackHat conference in Las Vegas, 60 percent said they expected the US to suffer a successful attack against its critical infrastructure in the next two years. (Arab News)

Futurenautics Intelligence is currently undertaking the largest research project in the industry into maritime cyber security, combining the data from its bi-annual seafarer survey ‘Crew Connectivity 2017’ – which in 2015 had over 3,000 respondents – and client-commissioned research on cyber-security strategies. (The Hellenic Shipping News)