What does MIME stand for in email?

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It is a standard that extends basic email so messages can carry more than plain ASCII text, including attachments, non-ASCII characters, images, audio, video, and other files.

MIME works by adding structured headers that describe the content type and encoding of each part of a message. A multipart message can contain several sections, such as a text version, an HTML version, and a binary attachment. Email software uses those labels to display or process each section correctly.

MIME was developed in the early 1990s to address limitations in traditional Internet email. The original email systems were designed primarily for seven-bit ASCII text, so arbitrary binary files and many writing systems could not be transferred reliably. MIME encoding made those kinds of content transportable through existing mail systems.

The same content-type concept appears beyond email. Web servers also use MIME types, such as text/html or image/png, to tell browsers how transmitted resources should be interpreted. MIME therefore connects everyday attachments with a broader Internet convention for labeling data.