n]
| 1. | the act of expressing or setting forth in words: the free expression of political opinions. |
| 2. | a particular word, phrase, or form of words: old-fashioned expressions. |
| 3. | the manner or form in which a thing is expressed in words; wording; phrasing: delicacy of expression. |
| 4. | the power of expressing in words: joy beyond expression. |
| 5. | indication of feeling, spirit, character, etc., as on the face, in the voice, or in artistic execution: the lyric expression embodied in his poetry. |
| 6. | a look or intonation expressing personal reaction, feeling, etc.: a shocked expression. |
| 7. | the quality or power of expressing an attitude, emotion, etc.: a face that lacks expression; to read with expression. |
| 8. | the act of expressing or representing, as by symbols. |
| 9. | Mathematics. a symbol or a combination of symbols representing a value, relation, or the like. |
| 10. | Linguistics. the stylistic characteristics of an utterance (opposed to meaning ). |
| 11. | Linguistics. the system of verbal utterances specific to a language (opposed to content ). |
| 12. | the act of expressing or pressing out. |
| 13. | Computers. a combination of variables, constants, and functions linked by operation symbols and any required punctuation that describe a rule for calculating a value. |
| 14. | Genetics.
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expression ex·pres·sion (ĭk-sprěsh'ən)
n.
The act of pressing or squeezing out.
The outward manifestation of a mood or disposition by mobility of the facial features; facies.
The phenotype manifested by a genotype under fixed environmental conditions.
expression programming
Any piece of program code in a high-level language which, when (if) its execution terminates, returns a value. In most programming languages, expressions consist of constants, variables, operators, functions, and parentheses. The operators and functions may be built-in or user defined. Languages differ on how expressions of different types may be combined - with some combination of explicit casts and implicit coercions.
The syntax of expressions generally follows conventional mathematical notation, though some languages such as Lisp or Forth have their own idiosyncratic syntax.
(2001-05-14)