Noun

(en noun)

An insect of the order Hemiptera (the "true bugs").

(colloquial) Any insect, arachnid, or other terrestrial arthropod that is a pest.

These flies are a bother. I’ll get some bug spray and kill them.

Various species of marine or freshwater crustaceans; e.g. a Morton Bay bug, mudbug.

A problem that needs fixing, especially in computing.

The software bug led the computer to calculate 2 plus 2 as 5.

* {{quote-book, year= 1878

, year_published= 1989 , quotee= (Thomas Edison) , author= Thomas P. Hughes , quoted_in= American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention , url= , title=Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers , type= cited by , chapter= , section= , isbn= 0-14-009741-4 , edition= , publisher= Penguin Books , location= Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J. , editor= , volume= , page= 75 , passage= I have the right principle and am on the right track, but time, hard work and some good luck are necessary too. It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise -- this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs " -- as such little faults and difficulties are called -- show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached. }}

A contagious illness; a bacterium or virus causing it

He’s got the flu bug .

An enthusiasm for something; an obsession

I think he’s a gold bug , he has over 10,000 ounces in storage.

to catch the skiing bug

An electronic intercept device

We installed a bug in her telephone

A small and and usually invisible file (traditionally a single-pixel image) on a World Wide Web page, primarily used to track users.

He suspected the image was a web bug used for determining who was visiting the site.

(broadcasting) A small, usually transparent or translucent image placed in a corner of a television program to indicate what network or cable channel is televising it

Channel 4's bug distracted Jim from his favorite show

(aviation) A manually positioned marker in flight instruments

A semi-automated telegraph key

* 1938 , Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport , page 257:

At this point your telegraph operator, sitting at your right, goes "Ticky-tick-tickety-de-tick-tick," with his bug , as he calls his transmitter, and looks at you expectantly.

* 1942 , Arthur Reinhold Nilson, Radio Code Manual , page 134:

As far as the dashes are concerned, the bug is the same in operation as any regular key would be if it were turned up on edge instead of sitting flat on the desk.

* 1986 , E. L. Doctorow, World's Fair , page 282:

I was a very good radio operator. I bought my own bug . That's what the telegraph key in its modern form was called. It was semiautomatic.

(obsolete) A bugbear; anything that terrifies.

* Shakespeare

Sir, spare your threats: / The bug which you would fright me with I seek.

HIV.

(poker) A limited form of wild card in some variants of poker.

Noun

(en noun)

(now, rare, chiefly, historical) A person employed to perform computations; one who computes.

* 1927 , J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays , page 173

Only a few years ago Mr. Powers, an American computer , disproved a hypothesis about prime numbers which had held the field for more than 250 years.

* 2003 , (Bill Bryson), A Short History of Nearly Everything , BCA, page 116:

One Harvard computer , Annie Jump Cannon, used her repetitive acquaintance with the stars to devise a system of stellar classifications so practical that it is still in use today.

by restriction, a male computer, where the female computer is called a computress

A programmable electronic device that performs mathematical calculations and logical operations, especially one that can process, store and retrieve large amounts of data very quickly; now especially, a small one for personal or home use employed for manipulating text or graphics, accessing the Internet, or playing games or media.