1377: i- Sep 18, 2018

With any piece of language, especially when it comes choosing synonyms, carries with it certain connotations. Latin and Greek are the languages usually preferred for science, medicine, and academia; this is both to keep it from getting confused with workaday words, but also it is culturally accepted as having more gravity. Likewise, technological words have their own cultural influences, even though it is newer. The 'i-' prefix in names like 'iPod' does have meaning—it stands for 'Internet'—but having started in 1994, this practice now is used to denote anything with online capabilities built in. As much as any other practice historically, it is merely a quick way to convey that whatever the matter in question is, it should be compartmentalized in a certain way.