peripheral
Noun · AdjectiveOpen English WordNet
Adjective (2)
- on or near an edge or constituting an outer boundary; the outer area“Russia's peripheral provinces”“peripheral suburbs”Opposite centralSimilar fringy, off-base, circumferential, encircling
- related to the key issue but not of central importance“a peripheral interest”“energy is far from a peripheral issue in the economy”“peripheral issues”Opposite basicSimilar incidental, incident
Noun (1)
- electronic equipment external to the circuit board that contains the CPU of a computer“disk drives and printers are important peripherals”Synonyms: computer peripheralperipheral deviceType of electronic equipmentKinds printer, output device, data input devicePart of computer, computing machine
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
1. Of or pertaining to a periphery; constituting a periphery; peripheric.
2. Anatomy External; away from the center; on or near the surface; as, the peripheral portion of the nervous system.
3. Pertaining to minor, unimportant, superficial, or irrelevant aspects of the matter in question; as, peripheral issues are dealt with in the appendix.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54 · with additions: GCIDE editors
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
<hardware> (Or "peripheral device", "device") Any part of a computer other than the CPU or working memory, i.e. disks, keyboards, monitors, mice, printers, scanners, tape drives, microphones, speakers, cameras, to list just the less exotic ones.
High speed working memory, such as RAM, ROM or, in the old days, core would not normally be referred to as peripherals. The more modern term "device" is also more general in that it is used for things such as a pseudo-tty, a RAM drive, or a network adapter.
Some argue that, since the advent of the personal computer, the motherboard, hard disk, keyboard, mouse, and monitor are all parts of the base system, and only use the term "peripheral" for optional additional components.
(2002-09-03)