key pad

noun — 2 senses

key pad

nounalso spelled key-pad
1

Rare Rare form of keypad.

  • And what are the chances that people will be getting video magazines on their television screens by punching up commands on their key pads?1982, Edwin Diamond, “Waiting for Godot?”, in Sign Off: The Last Days of Television, Cambridge, Mass.; London: The MIT Press, →ISBN, part IV (Futures), page 233:
  • To taps of the operators’ fingers on their key pads the screen images faded to darkness, which were then stopped up to grey.2008, Stephen Baxter, chapter 85, in Flood, London: Gollancz, →ISBN, page 417:
1 more example
  • Rogers picked up the phone and entered three numbers on his key pad.2016, Robert Ellis, chapter 59, in The Love Killings, Seattle, Wash.: Thomas & Mercer, →ISBN, page 292:

key-pad

noun
1

Rare Rare form of keypad.

  • The user presses the key on his key-pad corresponding to the required topic. […] If a viewdata user wanted to find out more information about a service, all he would do is key in the right code on his key-pad.1982, Elaine Williams, “Videotex”, in Gordon Rattray Taylor, editor, The Inventions that Changed the World: An Illustrated Guide to Man’s Practical Genius Through the Ages, London: The Reader’s Digest Association Limited, →OCLC, page 320, column 2:
  • For example, mail-order applications enable users to indicate, by numeric code on their key-pads an item to be purchased and a credit card number to be debited.1985 July, Jack Jones, “Networks and Microcomputers”, in Black Chip: A Journal of Computing for Anarchists, number 3, page 5, column 1:
1 more example
  • In the 1970s, no educationist would have predicted the explosion in universal written communication caused by the personal computer, the internet and the key-pad of the mobile phone.2003 November 6, Lynne Truss, “Introduction – The Seventh Sense”, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, London: Profile Books Ltd, →ISBN, pages 16–17:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for key pad and key-pad.