checksum

[ chek-suhm ]

noun

, Computers.

1. a string of characters derived from a piece of stored or transmitted digital data, used to determine whether that data has been corrupted or tampered with (often used attributively):

   The researchers crawled the website daily over four months but did not compare checksums of the returned pages, so we cannot rely on the integrity of that data.

   We have identified a problem with the previous checksum algorithm and provided a solution.

Word History and Origins

Origin of checksum¹

First recorded in 1935–40; check ¹( def ) + sum ( def )