Wireless Fidelity?

This morning, as the WiFi signal waxed and waned from her tablet, my wife asked me "What's the 'fi' in 'WiFi' mean."

I told her it really doesn't mean anything, but it was intended to be familiar, thanks to professional audio equipment known as "Hi-Fi" for High Fidelity that means the output is as close to the input as possible, but that "Wireless Fidelity" really didn't mean anything.


I wondered if there was more to the story, and found a decent write up of it here:

http://boingboing.net/2005/11/08/wifi-isnt-short-for.html

Wi-Fi doesn't stand for anything.
It is not an acronym. There is no meaning. 

And

The only reason that you hear anything about "Wireless Fidelity" is some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn't understand branding or marketing. They could not imagine using the name "Wi-Fi" without having some sort of literal explanation. So we compromised and agreed to include the tag line "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity"

Attributed to  Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance