Teleportation is the movement of matter from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, either by paranormal means or through technological artifice. Teleportation has been widely utilized in works of science fiction.
Similar is apport, an earlier word used to describe what today might be called teleportation; and bilocation, when something or someone described as being a magician is said to be able to occupy two places simultaneously. The word "teletransportation" (which simply expands Charles Fort's abbreviated term) was first employed by Derek Parfit as part of a thought exercise on identity.
Etymology
The word was coined in 1931 by American writer Charles Fort to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. He joined the Greek prefix tele- (meaning "distant") to the Latin verb portare (meaning "to carry"). Fort's first formal use of the word was in the second chapter of his 1931 book, Lo! "Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation." Though, with his typical half-serious jokiness, Fort added, "I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so myself. To some degree, I do not. I offer the data." Fort suggested that teleportation might explain various allegedly paranormal phenomena, though, typically, it's sometimes difficult to tell if Fort took his own "theory" seriously, or instead used it to point out what he saw as the inadequacy of mainstream science to account for strange phenomena.
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