A small panel or arrangement of buttons with numbers, letters, or symbols that you press to control a device like a phone or ATM.
A compound word from 'key' (an object that operates a mechanism) and 'pad' (a flat surface). Created in the 20th century as technology needed new vocabulary for interactive input devices.
The 'keypad' is a perfect example of how technology forces language to evolve—before phones and computers, we didn't need a word for 'a group of buttons arranged for input,' so we mashed 'key' and 'pad' together and created one!
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