The story
Blend of transfer + resistor. Said to have been coined by American engineer John Robinson Pierce in 1947, who used transresistance as the basis for forming transistor.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
transistor
tran·sis·torToday it means: A solid-state semiconductor device, with three terminals, which can be used for amplification, switching, voltage stabilization, signal modulation, and many other functions. Full definition →