The word the world uses for wireless networking. It stands for nothing, and that was the professional decision.
Documented
It means nothing, officially
The Wi-Fi Alliance hired branding firm Interbrand in 1999 to name IEEE 802.11. They produced Wi-Fi as a pun on hi-fi. Early ads briefly flirted with 'wireless fidelity', and the Alliance later stated plainly that the name is meaningless.
Assessment: Documented by the Alliance's own members. The world's favorite tech word is a sound, not a sentence.
Stories
The fidelity that never was
Ask anyone: Wi-Fi means wireless fidelity. It is in dictionaries of common knowledge, delivered with total confidence, and false in the only sense that matters: nobody named it that.
Assessment: A folk etymology so successful it outranks the truth in most minds. Exactly the archive's beat.
Interesting claims
Meaning colonizes empty names
The claim: a name chosen for its sound will always acquire a fake etymology, because users cannot tolerate a word without a story. Wi-Fi is the lab proof: the story was supplied by the market within months.
Assessment: The pattern repeats across brands and words. The archive calls it Tuesday.
Sources and further reading
Wi-Fi Alliance founding documents, 1999
Interbrand's naming account
Phil Belanger on the Alliance's statement that Wi-Fi stands for nothing
IEEE 802.11 standard documentation
Worth asking
If a word can be born meaningless and still grow a fake biography, what does that say about the old ones?