An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

Specifically defined data elements that describe how and when a particular set of data was collected, and how it is formatted. Metadata is used to organize, manipulate, and work with data when it is not necessary or desired to actually deal with the data itself. The reason is that the metadata is usually far smaller and easier to work with than the data that it represents.

See also: → meta-; → data.