DOS

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English

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Pronunciation

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Proper noun

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DOS

  1. (computing, historical) Acronym of Disk Operating System, a family of disk-based operating systems.
    Coordinate term: CP/M
    • 1993, Kris A. Jamsa, DOS: The Complete Reference, McGraw–Hill Osborne Media:
      Next, using your word processor or the DOS text editor, you can edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
    • 1993, Doug Lowe, The Only DOS Book You'll Ever Need, Mike Murach & Associates Incorporated, →ISBN, page 95:
      One way to do that is to turn the PC off and turn it back on again. Then, the PC performs its self-test and boots DOS.
  2. (US politics) Initialism of Department of State.
    Synonym: Foggy Bottom

Usage notes

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  • Normally applied to operating systems available for IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers from the early 1980s (PC-DOS, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, Novell DOS, FreeDOS), although the term was also used before and after this to refer to any disk-based operating system (such as the Data General Diskette Operating System for their minicomputers, or for the TRS-80 DOS used when the computer was upgraded from cassette data storage to diskette).

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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DOS (plural DOSes)

  1. (military) Initialism of date of service.
  2. (military) Initialism of date of separation.
  3. (computing, Internet) Initialism of denial of service.
    Alternative form: DoS
  4. (sciences) Initialism of density of states.
  5. (education) Initialism of director of studies.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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