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orca

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or⋅ca

  [awr-kuh]
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–noun
the killer whale, Orcinus orca.
Origin:
1865–70; < NL, L; see orc
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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killer whale  
n.  A black and white predatory whale (Orcinus orca) that feeds on large fish, squid, and sometimes dolphins and seals. Also called orca.
or·ca   (ôr'kə)   
n.  See killer whale.

[Latin ōrca, whale, probably alteration (probably influenced by ōrca, vessel) of Greek orux, orug-, pickax, a kind of large fish or whale, perhaps from orussein, to dig.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

orca 
"killer whale," 1846, introduced as a generic term for the species by J. Richardson & J.E. Gray in "The zoology of the voyage of HHS 'Erebus' & 'Terror,' " from L. orca "cetacean, a kind of whale." Earlier in Eng., orc, ork "large whale" (c.1590), from Fr. orque, had been used vaguely of sea monsters (see orc).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

Orca
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1986. Similar to Modula-2, but with support for distributed programming using shared data objects, like Linda. A 'graph' data type removes the need for pointers. Version for the Amoeba OS, comes with Amoeba. "Orca: A Language for Distributed Processing", H.E. Bal et al, SIGPLAN Notices 25(5):17-24 (May 1990).

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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