fossil
8 definitions found
fossil - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Fossil \Fos"sil\, n.
1. A substance dug from the earth. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
Note: Formerly all minerals were called fossils, but the word
is now restricted to express the remains of animals and
plants found buried in the earth. --Ure.
[1913 Webster]
2. (Paleon.) The remains of an animal or plant found in
stratified rocks. Most fossils belong to extinct species,
but many of the later ones belong to species still living.
[1913 Webster]
3. A person whose views and opinions are extremely
antiquated; one whose sympathies are with a former time
rather than with the present. [Colloq.]
[1913 Webster]
Fossil \Fos"sil\, a. [L. fossilis, fr. fodere to dig: cf. F.
fossile. See Fosse.]
1. Dug out of the earth; as, fossil coal; fossil salt.
[1913 Webster]
2. preserved from a previous geological age; as, fossil water
from deep wells; -- usually implying that the object so
described has had its substance modified by long residence
in the ground, but also used (as with fossil water) in
cases where chemical composition is not altered.
[PJC]
3. (Paleon.) Like or pertaining to fossils; contained in
rocks, whether petrified or not; as, fossil plants,
shells.
[1913 Webster]
Fossil copal, a resinous substance, first found in the blue
clay at Highgate, near London, and apparently a vegetable
resin, partly changed by remaining in the earth.
Fossil cork, Fossil flax, Fossil paper, or Fossil wood
, varieties of amianthus.
Fossil farina, a soft carbonate of lime.
Fossil ore, fossiliferous red hematite. --Raymond.
[1913 Webster]
fossil - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :
fossil
adj 1: characteristic of a fossil
n 1: someone whose style is out of fashion [syn: dodo, fogy,
fogey, fossil]
2: the remains (or an impression) of a plant or animal that
existed in a past geological age and that has been excavated
from the soil
fossil - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :
fossil
1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only
in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so
as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of
octal as default base for string escapes in C, in spite of
the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern
byte-addressable architectures. See dusty deck.
2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present
utility. Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7
and BSD Unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase
terminals. (In a perversion of the usual
backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually
been expanded and renamed in some later USG Unix releases as
the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.)
3. The FOSSIL (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level)
driver specification for serial-port access to replace the
brain-dead routines in the IBM PC ROMs. Fossils are used by
most MS-DOS BBS software in preference to the "supported"
ROM routines, which do not support interrupt-driven operation
or setting speeds above 9600; the use of a semistandard FOSSIL
library is preferable to the bare metal serial port
programming otherwise required. Since the FOSSIL
specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in,
drivers that use the hook but do not provide serial-port
access themselves are named with a modifier, as in "video
fossil".
[Jargon File]
fossil - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :
fossil
n.
1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in
historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to
break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base
for string escapes in C, in spite of the better match of
hexadecimal
to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See dusty deck.
2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility.
Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and BSD Unix tty
driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. (In a perversion of
the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has
actually
been expanded and renamed in some later USG Unix releases as the
IUCLC
and OLCUC bits.)
fossil - V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2006) :
FOSSIL
Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer
fossil - U.S. Gazetteer (1990) :
Fossil, OR (city, FIPS 26650)
Location: 44.99841 N, 120.21319 W
Population (1990): 399 (224 housing units)
Area: 2.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
fossil - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :
99 Moby Thesaurus words for "fossil":
Methuselah, afterglow, afterimage, ancient manuscript,
antediluvian, antique, antiquity, archaism, artifact, back number,
balance, butt, butt end, candle ends, cave painting, chaff,
conservative, dad, debris, detritus, dodo, elder, end, eolith,
fag end, filings, fogy, fud, fuddy-duddy, granny, has-been,
holdover, husks, leavings, leftovers, longhair, matriarch,
mezzolith, microlith, mid-Victorian, mossback, neolith,
odds and ends, offscourings, old believer, old crock, old dodo,
old fogy, old liner, old man, old poop, old woman, old-timer, orts,
paleolith, parings, patriarch, petrification, petrified forest,
petrified wood, petroglyph, plateaulith, pop, pops, rags,
reactionary, refuse, regular old fogy, relic, relics, reliquiae,
remainder, remains, remnant, residue, residuum, rest, roach,
rubbish, ruin, ruins, rump, sawdust, scourings, scraps, shadow,
shavings, square, starets, stick-in-the-mud, straw, stubble, stump,
survival, sweepings, trace, traditionalist, vestige, waste
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