spreadsheet

English

LibreOffice Calc

Etymology

From spread +‎ sheet. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “When was the term first used?”)

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈspɹɛd.ʃiːt/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈspɹɛd.ʃit/
  • Audio (Canada):(file)

Noun

spreadsheet (plural spreadsheets)

  1. (computing) A computer application for organization, analysis, and storage of data in tabular form.
    • 1985 September 15, Erik Snadberg-Diment, “Number Crunching on the Macintosh”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 December 2025:
      The program's most quintessentially Macintoshian feature, one as yet unique among spreadsheets, is its icon bar, which resides at the top of the screen just below the standard menu bar.
  2. A document created with such an application.
    Synonym: worksheet
    • 2009, Fred Vallance-Jones, David McKie, Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Comprehensive Primer, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 49:
      A little later in this chapter, we'll run through some of the most common methods journalists use to analyze the material they gather and store in spreadsheets.
    • 2014 July 15, Theck, “TC101: Intro to Theorycrafting”, in Sacred Duty‎[2], archived from the original on 7 January 2026:
      For example, my own entry into the world of theorycrafting happened when I took somebody’s prot paladin spreadsheet and translated it into MATLAB code.
  3. (dated) A sheet of paper, marked with a grid, in which financial data is recorded and totals calculated manually.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

spreadsheet (third-person singular simple present spreadsheets, present participle spreadsheeting, simple past and past participle spreadsheeted)

  1. (transitive) To model or compute by means of a spreadsheet.
    • 2020, Cory Doctorow, Attack Surface‎[3], Head of Zeus, →ISBN:
      If you'd spreadsheeted the cascade charts and sorted it by each name's sphere of influence, then the people Carrie Johnstone sent the police to get constituted a big chunk of the middle third—people who “commanded” maybe four of five others—and maybe 10 percent of the top influencers.

See also

Further reading

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