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Difference between ‘electronic’, ‘electric’ and ‘electrical’

Difference between ‘electronic’, ‘electric’ and ‘electrical’

by Jakub Marian

The mean­ings of “elec­tric”, “elec­trical”, and “elec­tronic” often over­lap, but the three ad­ject­ives are not com­pletely in­ter­change­able. 
The easi­est case to deal with is elec­tronic, which was ori­gin­ally defined as fol­lows: 
An electronic device is a device consisting of a large number of small complex parts that utilize electricity (such as microchips). 
We can speak of elec­tronic equip­ment, elec­tronic com­pon­ents, elec­tronic com­puters (a term fall­ing into dis­use due to the fact that all mod­ern com­puters are elec­tronic), and other elec­tronic devices. In mod­ern usage, any­thing that has an “elec­tronic ver­sion” (i.e. a ver­sion for elec­tronic devices) and was ori­gin­ally done or pro­duced without the use of elec­tronic devices can be de­scribed as being “elec­tronic” it­self (with “elec­tronic” often ab­bre­vi­ated as “e”), for ex­ample, 


electronic mail (e-mail, email), electronic media, electronic government (e-government), electronic music, … 


The words “elec­tric” and “elec­trical” have an over­lap­ping mean­ing: 
Both electric and electrical can be used to describe physical properties of electricity. 
It is pos­sible to use “elec­trical cur­rent” as well as “elec­tric cur­rent”, “elec­trical power” as well as “elec­tric power”, etc. However, when re­fer­ring to a par­tic­u­lar device that is based on turn­ing elec­tri­city into an­other form of en­ergy, the pre­ferred form is “elec­tric”: 


electric motor, electric guitar, electric light, electric spark plug, … 


Some­what sur­pris­ingly, when speak­ing about un­spe­cified devices or something only re­lated to elec­tri­city, most speak­ers use the ad­ject­ive “elec­trical” in­stead: 


electrical device, electrical equipment, electrical system, electrical engineering, electrical worker, … 


In most of these, “elec­tronic” would also work, but it would carry a dif­fer­ent mean­ing. For in­stance, a smart­phone and a laptop could be de­scribed as elec­tronicdevices, whereas most people would call elec­tric drills, toast­ers, and sim­ilar “prim­it­ive” tools elec­trical devices. 
Fi­nally, only the word “elec­tric” (not “elec­trical”) can be used meta­phor­ic­ally as a syn­onym for “ex­cit­ing”, as in 


electric evening, electric atmosphere, electric effect on the audience, … 

(https://jakubmarian.com/difference-between-electronic-electric-and-elect..)