chad
5 definitions found
chad - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Shad \Shad\ (sh[a^]d), n. sing. & pl. [AS. sceadda a kind of
fish, akin to Prov. G. schade; cf. Ir. & Gael. sgadan a
herring, W. ysgadan herrings; all perhaps akin to E. skate a
fish.] (Zool.)
Any one of several species of food fishes of the Herring
family. The American species (Alosa sapidissima formerly
Clupea sapidissima), which is abundant on the Atlantic
coast and ascends the larger rivers in spring to spawn, is an
important market fish. The European allice shad, or alose
(Alosa alosa formerly Clupea alosa), and the twaite shad
(Alosa finta formerly Clupea finta), are less important
species. [Written also chad.]
[1913 Webster]
Note: The name is loosely applied, also, to several other
fishes, as the gizzard shad (see under Gizzard),
called also mud shad, white-eyed shad, and winter shad
.
[1913 Webster]
Hardboaded shad, or Yellow-tailed shad, the menhaden.
Hickory shad, or Tailor shad, the mattowacca.
Long-boned shad, one of several species of important food
fishes of the Bermudas and the West Indies, of the genus
Gerres.
Shad bush (Bot.), a name given to the North American shrubs
or small trees of the rosaceous genus Amelanchier
(Amelanchier Canadensis, and Amelanchier alnifolia).
Their white racemose blossoms open in April or May, when
the shad appear, and the edible berries (pomes) ripen in
June or July, whence they are called Juneberries. The
plant is also called service tree, and Juneberry.
Shad frog, an American spotted frog (Rana halecina); --
so called because it usually appears at the time when the
shad begin to run in the rivers.
Trout shad, the squeteague.
White shad, the common shad.
[1913 Webster]
Chad \Chad\, n.
See Shad. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
chad - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :
chad
n 1: a small piece of paper that is supposed to be removed when
a hole is punched in a card or paper tape
2: a lake in north central Africa; fed by the Shari river [syn:
Lake Chad, Chad]
3: a landlocked desert republic in north-central Africa; was
under French control until 1960 [syn: Chad, Republic of Chad
, Tchad]
4: a family of Afroasiatic tonal languages (mostly two tones)
spoken in the regions west and south of Lake Chad in north
central Africa [syn: Chad, Chadic, Chadic language]
chad - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :
chad
perf
selvage
snaf
<jargon, printer> /chad/ (Or "selvage" /sel'v*j/ (sewing and
weaving), "perf", "perfory", "snaf"). 1. The perforated
edge strips on paper for sprocket feed printers, after they
have been separated from the printed portion.
The term perf may also refer to the perforations themselves,
rather than the chad they produce when torn.
[Why "snaf"?]
2. (Or "chaff", "computer confetti", "keypunch droppings") The
confetti-like bits punched out of punched cards or paper tape
which collected in the chad box.
One of the Jargon File's correspondents believed that "chad"
derived from the chadless keypunch.
[Jargon File]
(1997-07-18)
chad - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :
chad
/chad/, n.
1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they
have been separated from the printed portion. Also called selvage,
perf, and ripoff.
2. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape;
this has also been called chaff, computer confetti, and keypunch
droppings. It's reported that this was very old Army slang
(associated
with teletypewriters before the computer era), and has been
occasionally sighted in directions for punched-card vote tabulators
long after it passed out of live use among computer programmers in
the
late 1970s. This sense of `chad' returned to the mainstream during
the
finale of the hotly disputed U.S. presidential election in 2000 via
stories about the Florida vote recounts. Note however that in the
revived mainstream usage chad is not a mass noun and `a chad' is a
single piece of the stuff.
There is an urban legend that chad (sense 2) derives from the
Chadless
keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little u-shaped tabs in
the card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than
punching
out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch
didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be
`chad'. However, serious attempts to track down "Chadless" as a
personal name or U.S. trademark have failed, casting doubt on this
etymology -- and the U.S. Patent Classification System uses
"chadless"
(small c) as an adjective, suggesting that "chadless" derives from
"chad" and not the other way around. There is another legend that the
word was originally acronymic, standing for "Card Hole Aggregate
Debris", but this has all the earmarks of a backronym. It has also
been noted that the word "chad" is Scots dialect for gravel, but
nobody has proposed any plausible reason that card chaff should be
thought of as gravel. None of these etymologies is really plausible.
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