A wireless is an old-fashioned term for a radio receiver, referring to its use as a wireless telegraph. The term was widely used in England, long after radio was being used for other signals, such as music.
In modern usage, the term refers to communication without cables or cords, chiefly using radio frequency and infrared (i.e. IrDA) waves. eg. wireless networking of computers.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump