This page gathers the 5,883 dictionary entries belonging to the domain “Computing”, as labelled by Wiktionary. Each word leads to its full entry: definitions, etymology, pronunciation, examples. Page 2 of 59: from “affordance” to “Archie”.
- affordance noun Anything that is provided or furnished by an environment to an organism dwelling within it.
- agar noun A pattern that is periodic in both space and time covering the whole plane.
- agent noun In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server.…
- agent-oriented adj Of or pertaining to a programming paradigm where the construction of the software is centered on the concept of externally specified…
- agentic adj Acting autonomously on behalf of a user; (now especially artificial intelligence) involving the use of agentic AI.
- aggregation noun Summarizing multiple routes into one route.
- aggressive adj Exploiting every opportunity to be applied.
- agile noun Agile software development.
- agnostic adj Unaware or noncommittal regarding the specific nature of the components or input with which it interacts.
- air gap noun A network security measure that consists of ensuring that a secure computer network is physically isolated from unsecured networks, such as…
- airdrop verb To transfer a file using AirDrop.
- airwall noun The notional part of a network configuration which isolates computers physically from connection to a wider network such as the Internet.
- alchemy noun Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.
- alert noun Synonym of bell (“bell character”).
- alertable adj Capable of receiving and responding to notifications from other threads of execution.
- algorithmics noun The subdiscipline of informatics or computer science that studies algorithms.
- alias verb To assign an additional name to an entity, often a more user-friendly one.
- align verb To store (data) in a way that is consistent with the memory architecture, i.e. by beginning each item at an offset equal to some multiple…
- alignment noun A way of arranging DNA, RNA or protein sequences in order to identify regions of similarity.
- alive adj Synonym of live.
- all-in-one noun A desktop computer having all major components, including the display, built into a single unit.
- allegory noun A category that retains some of the structure of the category of binary relations between sets, representing a high-level generalization of…
- allocate verb To reserve a portion of memory for use by a computer program.
- allocator noun A utility that allocates and deallocates a dynamic resource (usually memory).
- alpha noun The first versions of a program, usually only available to the developer, and only tested by the developer.
- alpha conversion noun One of the three rewrite rules of lambda calculus, in which a bound variable of a lambda term is replaced by another variable across its…
- alpha layer noun An additional channel in a digital image or layer that stores transparency information for each pixel.
- alpha testing noun A process where a software application approaching full functionality is made available to a group of sophisticated users.
- alpha version noun An early preview version of a program or application, typically unstable, but useful to show what the product will do. Sometimes no more…
- alpha-beta filter noun An algorithm for data estimation and smoothing, closely related to Kalman filters, based on an approximation model with two internal…
- alpha-beta pruning noun An algorithm for pruning a search tree by eliminating any branch that is demonstrably inferior to a branch previously encountered.
- alphabet noun A typically finite set of distinguishable symbols.
- alt noun A modifier key used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys.
- Alt Gr noun A keyboard key that can be pressed simultaneously with other keys to result in additional characters such as accented letters and currency…
- alt key noun A key on a personal computer or terminal keyboard used in combination to alter the function of other keys.
- Alt-F4 noun A keyboard shortcut in Windows that completely closes the application or a focused window.
- alt-tab noun A keyboard shortcut in Windows that switches between application-level windows, sorted by most recently active.
- alternate action noun A feature of certain computer keyboards where a pressed key remains depressed and actuated until it is pressed again.
- alternating Turing machine noun A nondeterministic Turing machine containing a rule for accepting computations that generalizes the rules used in the definition of the…
- alternation noun A construct in a regular expression that can match any of several specified subexpressions.
- altmode noun An escape character used as a data terminator in certain systems, sometimes displayed on screen as a dollar sign.
- ALU noun Initialism of arithmetic logic unit.
- ambiance noun Of a three-dimensional model, a secondary color of a polygon that becomes more pronounced with shading.
- ambifix noun A string of characters used for both prefix and suffix.
- amble noun That which follows the preamble, by analogy.
- amoeba noun A large pattern with fluctuating edges typically made of whitespace.
- amortize verb To even out the costs of running an algorithm over many iterations, so that high-cost iterations are much less frequent than low-cost…
- amortized adj Of an algorithm, in which the costs of running it is evened out over many iterations.
- amortized constant time noun A class of algorithms in which the amortized time (the time per operation averaged over many operations) is constant, although for some…
- analog computer noun A computer (mechanical, electrical or other) that processes using continuously varying signals rather than digital, quantized, values.
- analyst noun A systems analyst.
- analytic function noun window function
- anchor noun A line of code in a program which acts as a reference point for further code to be added immediately before or after, usually via copy and…
- ancilla noun An ancilla bit
- androgynous adj Of a connector or docking port, able to connect to another connector or port of the same type, rather than being restricted to connecting…
- android noun A mobile phone running on Android OS.
- angle bracket noun Either of the inequality signs < and >, when used as brackets in programming languages and markup languages.
- angry fruit salad noun A web page or user interface that is poorly designed and overuses color.
- annotation noun Metadata added to a document or program.
- ANSI art noun A form of letter art that used the extended ASCII character set from the IBM Model 5150 Personal Computer's (IBM PC) Disk Operating System…
- answer back verb To issue echo characters, protocol responses, reflexive connection requests, etc.
- answer set programming noun A declarative, logic-based programming paradigm designed for solving complex combinatorial search and optimization problems.
- anti-feature noun Functionality originally intended as a feature, but perceived as a bug, annoyance, or infringement of freedoms by some or even most users.
- antialias verb To smooth using antialiasing.
- antialiasing noun any technique that reduces the appearance of jagged edges in digital images caused by high-contrast borders between pixels.
- antiblocker noun A kind of software that disrupts the activity of viruses, etc. that attempt to block the activity of a computer.
- antibot adj Working to combat or defend against bots, especially malicious or disruptive ones.
- antibugging noun The strategy of writing code so as to minimise the possibility of error.
- antigame noun A strategy in which a player refuses to participate in a game or replaces it with a game with different rules.
- antijoin noun A type of join, denoted by ▷, such that R▷S yields only those tuples in R for which S has no corresponding tuple of the same value.
- antimessage noun A message in a distributed system whose purpose is to cancel out another specific message sent previously.
- antipacket noun A record indicating that a previously transmitted packet of data was successfully received, and preventing it from being sent again to the…
- antiportal noun A defined plane or volume that can never be seen through, and which thus reduces the number of calculations involved in rendering a…
- antishadow noun An inaccurate shadow in a three-dimensional rendering, caused by a vertex of an object being projected through the point of a light source.
- antitracking adj Of a system or application, preventing the gathering or collecting of personal data or information.
- antiviral adj Eliminating or inhibiting the action of a computer virus.
- antiworm adj Countering or preventing worms (self-replicating programs).
- anycast noun A network addressing and routing scheme whereby data is routed to the nearest or best destination as viewed by the routing topology.
- AP noun Initialism of access point.
- apartment noun A conceptual space used for separation in the threading architecture. Objects in one apartment cannot directly access those in another, but…
- app noun An application (program), especially a small one designed for a mobile device.
- app wrapper noun An application for mobile devices made wholly from an existing website or platform, with few or no changes made to the original version.
- appbar noun A toolbar, anchored to an edge of the user's desktop, providing quick access to programs or features.
- append noun An instance of writing more data to the end of an existing file.
- appendable adj That can be extended by appending to it.
- appification noun The conversion of traditional programs, websites, etc. into small, self-contained apps targeting mobile devices.
- applet noun A small program module that runs under the control of a larger application, typically a web browser.
- appliance computer noun A computer sold to consumers as a unit ready to be switched on and used, rather than a kit for self-assembly.
- application noun A computer program or the set of software that the end user perceives as a single entity as a tool for a well-defined purpose. (Also…
- application bundle noun A package format, often a directory with a specific structure, containing all the files and resources necessary for a program to run.
- application domain noun An isolated context, with its own virtual address space, in which an application runs, analogous to a process in an operating system.
- application program noun A computer program written to solve a particular problem or to be used in a particular user-defined application.
- application programming interface noun A set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications, which makes it possible for software components to interact…
- application software noun A set of computer programs that work together to solve a particular problem or to be used for a particular user-defined application.
- applicative adj Of a programming language: using successive functional transformations on data to arrive at a result.
- approximation algorithm noun A method of finding a nearly optimal solution to an optimization problem that cannot be solved exactly within a reasonable time.
- AprilTag noun A type of tag consisting of a grid of black and white squares, used in robotics and computer vision applications.
- ar noun Initialism of augmented reality.
- arbitrary-precision arithmetic noun Any calculation that is performed on numbers whose digits of precision are limited only by the available memory of the host system.
- Archie noun An Acorn Archimedes computer.