Virtuous English AcademyDigital & Technology — B2 English Vocabulary
This B2 vocabulary list gathers 50 upper-intermediate English words about digital & technology — algorithms, data and cybersecurity. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using digital & technology words in English
Computing English is where the argument about data lives. The word began as a Latin plural, is still treated as one in scientific writing, and has become an ordinary uncountable noun almost everywhere else. This page settles that, along with the nouns in this field that refuse a plural, and a group of nouns that have quietly turned into verbs.
What to watch out for
Data is singular in most modern writing
Historically data is the plural of datum, and scientific journals still write the data are inconclusive. In general and business English it now behaves as an uncountable mass noun: the data is encrypted, a lot of data. Both are defensible; what matters is consistency within one document. Datum itself has almost disappeared outside surveying and statistics.
Nouns in this field become verbs freely
English turns technical nouns into verbs with no change of form: you interface with a system, debug a program, host a site. The same applies to message, email and screenshot. This process is called conversion, and it is one of the main ways English generates new vocabulary. Watch the spelling with particle verbs: back up is the verb and backup the noun.
Malware and bandwidth take no plural
Like software and hardware, malware is uncountable: a piece of malware, never malwares. Bandwidth and storage behave the same way. But a database, a server, a firewall and an algorithm are all perfectly countable. And encryption is the noun while encrypt is the verb: the file is encrypted, end-to-end encryption.
Words learners mix up
Technology vocabulary looks interchangeable from outside and is not. These three clusters cover what each security word actually does, what to call a failure, and which marketing adjectives make a real claim.
The security words do four different jobs
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| encryption | Scrambles the content so that intercepting it is useless without the key. Protects data, not the machine. | Messages are protected by end-to-end encryption. |
| firewall | Filters traffic in and out of a network, deciding what is allowed through. Protects the boundary, not the content. | The firewall blocks all incoming connections by default. |
| malware | The threat itself — any hostile software. An umbrella term covering viruses, ransomware and spyware. | The laptop was infected with malware. |
| cybersecurity | The whole discipline, including the people and the policies. One word, no hyphen, uncountable. | She works in cybersecurity for a bank. |
| biometric | Identifying a person by a physical feature — fingerprint, face, iris. An authentication method, not a defence. | The phone uses biometric authentication. |
The common error is treating these as a list of near-synonyms for safe. They sit at different layers, and a sentence like we use cybersecurity on our files is the giveaway — you encrypt files, you firewall a network, and cybersecurity is the field that decides to do both.
When something breaks, what do you call it?
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| glitch | A small, temporary, often unexplained fault that clears up. Informal, and implies nothing serious. | A glitch in the booking system lost the seat numbers. |
| debug | The work of finding and removing a genuine defect in the code — a bug — which stays there until someone fixes it. | They spent a week trying to debug the payment module. |
| outage | A service being unavailable for a period — network, power, platform. Countable, and measured in minutes. | A four-hour outage took the site offline. |
| obsolete | Not broken at all: superseded, no longer supported or produced. An adjective describing age, not failure. | The format became obsolete within five years. |
The distinction that matters in writing is glitch against bug: a glitch is what a user experiences and an engineer cannot reproduce, a bug is what an engineer can locate. Companies prefer the first word for exactly that reason.
Marketing adjectives: which ones say anything?
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| user-friendly | Makes a real, testable claim — easy for a non-expert to use. Always hyphenated. | A genuinely user-friendly interface with no manual. |
| immersive | Also specific: it surrounds the user so that the outside world drops away. Belongs to virtual reality, cinema and games. | An immersive exhibition projected on all four walls. |
| cutting-edge | Claims only that something is the most advanced of its kind right now — a claim that expires. Hyphenated before a noun. | Cutting-edge research into battery chemistry. |
| high-tech | The vaguest of the four, and now slightly dated. Says a thing involves advanced technology without saying which. | A high-tech factory on the edge of town. |
Follow the hyphens: all four are hyphenated when they sit in front of the noun, and cutting edge without one is the noun phrase — at the cutting edge of research. This is the same rule that governs peer-reviewed and close-knit.
Collocations that sound natural
Technical writing is highly formulaic, which makes it easy to get right. These pairings are what appear in product documentation and outage notices, and the near-misses stand out immediately.
encryption
end-to-end encryptionstrong encryptionan encryption keyencrypt a file
End-to-end takes two hyphens and means nobody in the middle — not even the provider — can read the content.
outage
a power outagea network outagea planned outagecause an outage
A planned outage is scheduled maintenance; the honest word for the other kind is unplanned.
backup
back up your filesa full backuprestore from a backupan automatic backup
Two words for the verb, one for the noun — the test is whether you can split it: back the files up.
prototype
build a prototypea working prototypean early prototypetest a prototype
The adjective that carries the information is working: a prototype that does not work yet is a mock-up.
surveillance
under surveillancemass surveillancea surveillance cameraplace under surveillance
Uncountable, and pronounced sur-VAY-lənce. The person watched is under it, never in it.
infrastructure
critical infrastructureIT infrastructureinvest in infrastructureageing infrastructure
Uncountable in every sense, so never infrastructures.
Formal, neutral or informal?
Technology English dates faster than any other vocabulary, and a word that sounded advanced ten years ago can now place you precisely in time. Three items here are worth handling carefully.
- digitise vs digitaliseGenuinely differentTo digitise is to convert something into digital form — scanning an archive. To digitalise is to reorganise how an operation works around digital technology. Business writing uses the second; most learners want the first.
- cyberOfficial · dated aloneAlive as a prefix in official and journalistic English — cyber attack, cyber crime, cybersecurity. Standing on its own as an adjective it belongs to the 1990s and now sounds faintly comic.
- glitchInformalFine in speech, in journalism and in a customer email. Too vague for an incident report, where the word is fault, defect or outage depending on what actually happened.
- high-techDated marketingStill understood, but it dates a text. Current writing prefers naming the technology, or advanced.
- applianceTwo sensesIn ordinary English a domestic machine — a washing machine, a fridge. In networking, a dedicated hardware device: a security appliance. Context separates them completely.
- hackerContestedIn general and journalistic use it means someone who breaks into systems illegally. Among programmers it is a compliment meaning an ingenious problem-solver, which is why you meet phrases like hacker culture. The unambiguous negative word is attacker or intruder.
- computingNeutral · BritishThe British name for the school and university subject, where American English says computer science. Also uncountable: cloud computing, a career in computing.
Sentences to try
Four frames from a technical brief. Decide in each one whether the noun can be counted.
- All customer data is protected by end-to-end encryption.
- The algorithm queries the database in under a second.
- The firewall blocked the malware before it reached the server.
- Remember to back up the files before you debug the code.
Questions about digital & technology vocabulary
Is "data" singular or plural?
Both are current, and the choice depends on the register. In scientific and academic writing, data is the plural of datum and takes a plural verb: The data suggest a correlation. In business, journalism and everyday technical English it has become an uncountable mass noun like information: The data is stored securely. Neither is an error in general use, but a single document should pick one and keep to it. The singular datum now survives mainly in surveying and statistics.
Is it "backup" or "back up"?
Two words for the verb, one word for the noun. You back up your files, and what you produce is a backup. English applies this consistently to phrasal verbs that have become nouns: you log in and enter your login; you set up the system and follow the setup; you check out and go to the checkout. A quick test is whether you can put a word in the middle — back the files up works, which confirms you need the two-word verb.
Can I say "malwares" or "softwares"?
No. Malware, software, hardware, firmware, bandwidth and storage are all uncountable, so they take a singular verb and never an -s: The malware was detected. To count, use a unit — a piece of malware, three pieces of software — or switch to a countable word such as program, application, app or virus. By contrast, a database, a server, a browser and an algorithm are all ordinary countable nouns.