The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Object Linking and Embedding
OLE

    (OLE) A distributed object system and
   protocol from Microsoft, also used on the Acorn
   Archimedes.  OLE allows an editor to "farm out" part of a
   document to another editor and then reimport it.  For example,
   a desk-top publishing system might send some text to a word
   processor or a picture to a bitmap editor using OLE.

   (1998-12-17)