process

Webster's Dictionary (1913)

Origin: F. procès, L. processus. See Proceed.

1. The act of proceeding; continued forward movement; procedure; progress; advance. “Long process of time.” John Milton

The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.— Alfred Tennyson

2. A series of actions, motions, or occurrences; progressive act or transaction; continuous operation; normal or actual course or procedure; regular proceeding; as, the process of vegetation or decomposition; a chemical process; processes of nature.

Tell her the process of Antonio's end.— William Shakespeare

3. A statement of events; a narrative. obsolete Geoffrey Chaucer

4. Anat. & Zool. Any marked prominence or projecting part, especially of a bone; anapophysis.

5. Law The whole course of proceedings in a cause real or personal, civil or criminal, from the beginning to the end of the suit; strictly, the means used for bringing the defendant into court to answer to the action; — a generic term for writs of the class called judicial.

Deacon's process Chemistry, a method of obtaining chlorine gas by passing hydrochloric acid gas over heated slag which has been previously saturated with a solution of some metallic salt, as sulphate of copper. — Final process Practice, a writ of execution in an action at law. Alexander Mansfield. Burrill — In process, in the condition of advance, accomplishment, transaction, or the like; begun, and not completed. — Jury process Law, the process by which a jury is summoned in a cause, and by which their attendance is enforced. Alexander Mansfield. Burrill — Leblanc's process Chemistry, the process of manufacturing soda by treating salt with sulphuric acid, reducing the sodium sulphate so formed to sodium sulphide by roasting with charcoal, and converting the sodium sulphide to sodium carbonate by roasting with lime. — Mesne process. See under Mesne. — Process milling, the process of high milling for grinding flour. See under Milling. — Reversible process Thermodynamics, any process consisting of a cycle of operations such that the different operations of the cycle can be performed in reverse order with a reversal of their effects.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

1.<operating system, software> The sequence of states of an executing program. A process consists of the program code (which may be shared with other processes which are executing the same program), private data, and the state of the processor, particularly the values in its registers. It may have other associated resources such as a process identifier, open files, CPU time limits, shared memory, child processes, and signal handlers.

One process may, on some platforms, consist of many threads. A multitasking operating system can run multiple processes concurrently or in parallel, and allows a process to spawn "child" processes.

(2001-06-16)

2.<business> The sequence of activities, people, and systems involved in carrying out some business or achieving some desired result. E.g. software development process, project management process, configuration management process.

(2001-06-16)