means The global network of interconnected computer networks that lets devices everywhere exchange data, carrying the web, email, video, and nearly everything else digital.

from A blend of "inter-" (Latin for "between, among") and "network," shortened from "internetwork" — literally a network of networks. The term grew out of 1970s research on linking separate computer networks together; the underlying protocol work used "internetworking" to describe stitching distinct systems into one, and the clipped form "internet" stuck, eventually graduating to a capital-I proper noun for the one that swallowed the world.