The word string has a number of rather different meanings in modern English, though they are all related in the sense of denoting something long and thin.
- In common speech, it refers to a textile material, use for such things as wrapping packages. Kite string is another example.
- In computer software, it is a data type representing a sequence of characters.
- String theory is a cutting-edge theory of physics at extremely small scales, postulating that what ordinary quantum mechanics considers to be subatomic particles of size 10−15 meters are actually closed loops, that is strings, of even smaller size.