Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A trademark for a computer operating system that allows multiple simultaneous users.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A computer operating system that shares the original source code by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, currently owned by Novell.
  • proper noun An operating system largely compatible with Unix that qualifies for use of the Unix trademark, currently owned by The Open Group.
  • proper noun informal A Unix-like operating system similar to Unix but not qualifying for use of the Unix trademark.
  • proper noun The group of Unix operating systems as a whole.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A pun on Multics; coined by Brian Kernighan.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Unix.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.