Glossary
Electronics Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential electronics technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key electronics technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in electronics technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Calibration
- Adjusting instruments to standards.
- Capacitor
- Stores electrical charge.
- ESD
- Electrostatic discharge.
- Multimeter
- Measures voltage, current and resistance.
- Ohm’s law
- Voltage equals current times resistance.
- Oscilloscope
- An instrument that displays signals over time.
- PCB
- Printed circuit board.
- Resistor
- Limits current flow.
- Rework
- Repairing or replacing components on a board.
- Root cause
- The underlying reason for a failure.
- Schematic
- A diagram of a circuit.
- Signal integrity
- The quality of electrical signals.
- Solder joint
- An electrical connection made with solder.
- Test fixture
- A device that holds boards for testing.
- Transistor
- A semiconductor switch or amplifier.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Electronics Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Electronics Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.