means To bring goods, ideas, or files in from somewhere else — usually across a border — for use at home.

from From Latin importare, a fusion of in- ('into') and portare ('to carry') — the same portare that gives us porter, portable, and the ship's port. So at its root, to import is literally to carry something into harbor, which is exactly how the word arrived in English in the 1400s: cargo and vocabulary alike, unloaded at the dock.