Fossil : adj : characteristic of a fossil
(noun)
1: someone whose style is out of fashion [syn: dodo, fogy,
fogey]
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
Based on WordNet 2.0
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Fossil : \Fos"sil\, n.
1. A substance dug from the earth. [Obs.]
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.
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.
3. A person whose views and opinions are extremely
antiquated; one whose sympathies are with a former time
rather than with the present. [Colloq.]
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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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.
2. (Paleon.) Like or pertaining to fossils; contained in
rocks, whether petrified or not; as, fossil plants,
shells.
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, flax, paper, or wood, varieties of
amianthus.
Fossil farina, a soft carbonate of lime.
Fossil ore, fossiliferous red hematite. --Raymond.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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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]
Based on the Online Dictionary of Computing [Computer_Dictionary]:
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Fossil : Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer
Based on Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [Acronyms_Dictionary]:
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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)
Based on U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [Census_Database]:
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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.) 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'.
Based on U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [Census_Database]:
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