The term 'wiki' is a direct borrowing from the Hawaiian word 'wikiwiki', meaning 'quick' or 'fast'. It was chosen by programmer Ward Cunningham in 1994 when he created the first collaborative website, the WikiWikiWeb, inspired by the name of the 'Wiki Wiki Shuttle' bus at Honolulu International Airport. The Hawaiian term itself is a reduplication of 'wiki', meaning 'to hurry'. The conceptual link from 'quick' to a collaborative website lies in the speed and ease with which pages can be created and edited by users, contrasting with more static, traditional web pages. Thus, the modern abstract meaning of a user-editable website evolved from this metaphorical application of Hawaiian speed to the digital realm.

The word 'wiki' is a simplex loanword from Hawaiian. It is not composed of separate morphemes in English. Its functional role is as a single lexical unit.