[kuh
n-sohl] 
| to alleviate or lessen the grief, sorrow, or disappointment of; give solace or comfort: Only his children could console him when his wife died. |
[kon-sohl] | 1. | a television, phonograph, or radio cabinet designed to stand on the floor rather than on a table or shelf. |
| 2. | the control or monitoring unit of a computer, containing the keyboard or keys, switches, etc. |
| 3. | a desklike structure containing the keyboards, pedals, etc., by means of which an organ is played. |
| 4. | a small cabinet standing on the floor and having doors. |
| 5. | console table. |
| 6. | the control unit of a mechanical, electrical, or electronic system: the console that controls a theater's lighting system. |
| 7. | Architecture. an ornamental corbel or bracket, esp. one high in relation to its projection. |
| 8. | Automotive. a tray or container typically divided into compartments, mounted between bucket seats, and used for storing small items. |
| 9. | Nautical. a unit on a vessel containing steering apparatus, systems monitoring equipment, etc.: a bridge console, an engine-room console. |
| con·sole 1 (kən-sōl') tr.v. con·soled, con·sol·ing, con·soles To allay the sorrow or grief of. See Synonyms at comfort. [French consoler, from Old French, from Latin cōnsōlārī : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + sōlārī, to comfort.] con·sol'a·ble adj., con·so'la·to'ry (-sō'lə-tôr'ē, -tōr'ē, -sŏl'ə-) adj., con·sol'er n., con·sol'ing·ly adv. |
| con·sole 2 (kŏn'sōl') n.
[French, perhaps short for consolider, to strengthen, from Latin cōnsolidāre; see consolidate.] |
console
1. The operator's station of a mainframe. In times past, this was a privileged location that conveyed godlike powers to anyone with fingers on its keys. Under Unix and other modern time-sharing operating systems, such privileges are guarded by passwords instead, and the console is just the tty the system was booted from. Some of the mystique remains, however, and it is traditional for sysadmins to post urgent messages to all users from the console (on Unix, /dev/console).
2. On microcomputer Unix boxes, the main screen and keyboard (as opposed to character-only terminals talking to a serial port). Typically only the console can do real graphics or run X. See also CTY.
[The Jargon File]
console
in architecture, type of bracket or corbel, particularly one with a scroll-shaped profile: usually an ogee (S or inverted S curve) or double-ogee terminating in volutes (spirals) above and below. A console projects about one-half its height or less to support a windowhead, cornice, shelf, or sculpture. The difference between a console and other varieties of bracket has more to do with where it is used than its appearance, though in general a cantilever or modillion is supposed to project farther than a console in proportion to its height
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