bootstrap
verbEtymology From boot + strap. The sense "pull up (without aid)" comes from the phrase pull oneself up by one's bootstraps.
To help (oneself) without the aid of others.
- Sam spent years bootstrapping himself through college.
- I was born into that shitty town, maleness, in the remains of outdated ideals and misplaced machismo and repression and there are some good people stuck living there. They are not in charge. They did not build it. And I don’t feel okay just moving out and saying “fuck y’all — bootstrap your way out or die out, I was never one of you.” I want to make it a better, healthier place—not spend all my time talking about how shitty it is and how anyone who would choose to live there deserves it.2016 March 11, Jennifer Coates, “I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.”, in Medium:
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences To load the operating system into the memory of a computer. Usually shortened to boot.
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences To compile the tools that will be used to compile the rest of a system or program.
- Bootstrapping means building the GNU C Library, GNU Compiler Collection and several other key system programs.Gentoo X86 Handbook
Broadly To build or put together (something) by first building or putting together the tools, building blocks, ideas, etc., necessary to build (the thing).
- And she finds the plan. She doesn't remember it; she bootstraps it from first principles, in a handful of minutes, just like she's done a hundred times before.2016 January 1, qntm, “Your Last First Day”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 04 Sep 2024:
Mathematics, Sciences, Statistics To employ a bootstrap method.
To expand or advance an activity or a collection based solely on previous actions, work, findings, etc.
- Gradually, more and more terms were discovered, especially as there was a tendency in the literature to list a number of related terms together, thus allowing me to bootstrap new terms found accompanying those originally searched for.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 5:
- Related terms
- reboot