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Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

1. an operating system developed by Bill Gates for personal computers;
[syn: MS-DOS, Microsoft disk operating system]


WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

MS-DOS n 1: an operating system developed by Bill Gates for personal computers [syn: MS-DOS, Microsoft disk operating system]
V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (February 2016):

MSDOS MicroSoft Disk Operating System (MS, OS, PC)
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

MS-DOS /M?S?dos/, n. [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A clone of CP/M for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products, who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it ever since. Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have something to demo for IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft's 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the 360). The name further annoys those who know what the term operating system does (or ought to) connote; DOS is more properly a set of relatively simple interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS like ?dose?, as in ?I don't work on dose, man!?, or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide circulation among hackers exhorts: ?MS-DOS: Just say No!?). See mess-dos.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Microsoft Disk Operating System Microsoft DOS MS-DOS /M S doss/ (Or "MS-DOS", "PC-DOS", "MS-DOG", "mess-dos") Microsoft Corporation's clone of the CP/M disk operating system for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since. MS-DOS is a single user operating system that runs one program at a time and is limited to working with one megabyte of memory, 640 kilobytes of which is usable for the application program. Special add-on EMS memory boards allow EMS-compliant software to exceed the 1 MB limit. Add-ons to DOS, such as Microsoft Windows and DESQview, take advantage of EMS and allow the user to have multiple applications loaded at once and switch between them. Numerous features, including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection and pipelines, were hacked into MS-DOS 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch ("-" or "/"). The resulting mess became the highest-unit-volume operating system in history. It was used on many Intel 16 and 32 bit microprocessors and IBM PC compatibles. Many of the original DOS functions were calls to BASIC (in ROM on the original IBM PC), e.g. Format and Mode. People with non-IBM PCs had to buy MS-Basic (later called GWBasic). Most version of DOS came with some version of BASIC. Also know as PC-DOS or simply DOS, ignoring the fact that there were many other OSes with that name, starting in the mid-1960s with IBM's first disk operating system for the IBM 360. [Jargon File] (2007-05-21)