Fax is short for facsimile, a Latin borrowing meaning make alike, and the word names both the method and the copy: to fax a page is to send an exact image of it over a telephone call to a machine or service that prints or stores it at the other end. That is still what fax means, but the machine has largely gone. Most faxes today are sent from a browser, an app or an email through an online service that owns the phone lines, and received as a PDF in an account. This page gives the meaning, the reason the word survived, and what a fax costs when nobody owns a machine.
What is fax, in one paragraph
A fax is a scanned image of a page turned into sound and sent down a phone line to another device that turns the sound back into the image. The sender's device and the receiver's device talk to each other at the start of the call to agree a speed and a page size, then the pages go across one at a time, and the receiving end confirms each one. Because the two ends confirm, the sender gets a report saying the pages arrived, and that report is the reason fax outlived email in medicine, law and insurance: it is evidence of delivery that a court and a regulator accept. The method is standardised in the ITU's T.30 recommendation and has not materially changed since.
What does fax mean now that the machine is gone
Whats a fax when nobody has a machine? The same thing at the two ends of the phone call, with a vendor's servers standing in for the machine at one or both ends. An online fax service owns the lines and the numbers; the sender uploads a PDF or emails it, the service dials the recipient's number and transmits it as a normal fax, and an inbound fax to the service's number arrives in the account as a PDF. The word kept its meaning because the receiving side, a hospital or a county office, still has a number and expects a fax; the sending side simply stopped buying hardware. What is faxing today is, for most people, sending a PDF to a phone number.
The faxing meaning that matters to a buyer
For the person searching whats fax because a form says fax it to us, the practical meaning is: you need a service that can dial a fax number, and you may not need a number of your own. Sending only, a one-time service or a free sender will do. Sending and receiving, a plan with a number is needed, and those start at Fax.Plus's printed $6.99 a month with 200 pages, CocoFax's $9.99 with 60 pages, MetroFax's $11.95 with 550 pages, iFax's $12.49 with 200 pages and WestFax's $14.99 with 500 pages. If the pages carry health information the meaning acquires a second layer, a business associate agreement, covered on the HIPAA pages of this site.
Questions people ask about fax meaning
Is fax the same as a scan?
A scan makes the image; a fax sends it to a phone number and gets a delivery confirmation. Online fax services do both, taking a photo or a PDF and transmitting it.
Why is it still called fax?
Because the receiving end is still a fax: a number that answers a call and expects pages. Sending from an app changed the sender's side only.
Does faxing still cost money?
Sending a page or two can be free through a limited sender. A number to receive on costs a plan; the cheapest printed entry price in the index is Fax.Plus at $6.99 a month.