[syn: nan, naan]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Nan \Nan\, interj. [For anan.]
Anan. [Prov. Eng.]
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
nan
n 1: your grandmother
2: the mother of your father or mother [syn: grandma,
grandmother, granny, grannie, gran, nan, nanna]
3: a river of western Thailand flowing southward to join the
Ping River to form the Chao Phraya [syn: Nan, Nan River]
4: leavened bread baked in a clay oven in India; usually shaped
like a teardrop [syn: nan, naan]
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
Not-a-Number
NaN
(NaN) An IEEE floating point representation
for the result of a numerical operation which cannot return a
valid number value. A NaN can result from multiplying an
infinity by a zero, or from subtracting one infinity from
another [what else?].
NaN is encoded as a special bit pattern [what pattern?]
which would otherwise represent a floating-point number. It
is used to signal error returns where other mechanisms are not
convenient, e.g. a hardware floating-point unit and to allow
errors to propagate through a calculation.
Similar bit patterns represent positive and negative
overflow and underflow and the positive and negative
infinities resulting from division by zero.
Bit patterns
(http://psc.edu/general/software/packages/ieee/ieee.html).
[ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985].
[Correct?]
(2001-04-01)