outage
OW-tij
/ˈaʊ.tɪdʒ/
A period of time when a service, such as electricity, internet, or a software system, is completely unavailable or not working.
An outage implies a total loss of service over a significant area or time, rather than a minor, localized glitch.
The story behind the word. A relatively modern English compound combining 'out' (as in 'out of service') with the noun suffix '-age'. It was first used in the early 20th century to describe periods when power plants or telegraph lines were non-functional.
Word relationships
- blackout: Blackout usually refers specifically to a total loss of electrical power or light, whereas outage can apply to any digital service, network, or utility.
- uptime: Uptime refers to the period during which a computer or service is successfully running and available.
Commonly confused with
- downtime: Downtime is the total time a system is offline (often planned for maintenance), while an outage is the specific event of service failure (usually unplanned).
Word family
- outages (noun): Plural form of outage.
Collocations
- power outage
- network outage
- unplanned outage
Example sentences
- "A sudden power outage knocked out the company's primary servers, halting operations nationwide." News report on a major cloud service failure.
Memory hook
When the power is OUT, the system is in an OUTage. Power is out, system is down.
When not to use
Do not use to describe a slow connection or a minor application error; those are performance issues or glitches, not outages.
Fun facts
- The term 'outage' was originally popularized by utility companies in the United States before being adopted globally by the telecommunications and IT sectors.
Explore more words
downtime, standstill, cessation, hiatus, congestion, discontinue
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