the.com/converter

means A device or program that changes something — units, energy, file formats, signals — from one form into an equivalent in another, without changing what it fundamentally is.

from From Latin 'convertere' — 'con-' (together, wholly) plus 'vertere' (to turn). The same 'vertere' root that gives us 'verse' and 'version' is all about turning: a converter is simply something that turns one thing wholly into another shape. The word entered English in the 1300s–1400s for people or things that 'turn' something else into a new state, long before it meant the app quietly doing your kilometers-to-miles math.