ru⋅by
[roo-bee]
noun, plural -bies, adjective | 1. | a red variety of corundum, used as a gem. |
| 2. | something made of this stone or one of its imitations, as a bearing in a watch. |
| 3. | a deep-red port wine. |
| 4. | deep red; carmine. |
| 5. | British Printing. a 5 1/2 -point type, nearly corresponding in size to American agate. |
| 6. | ruby-colored: ruby lips. |
| 7. | containing or set or adorned with a ruby or rubies: a ruby necklace. |
1275–1325; ME rubi (n.) < OF < OPr robi(n) < ML rubīnus (lapis) red (stone), deriv. of L ruber red 1

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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Ruby
Ru"by\, n.; pl. Rubies. [F. rubis (cf. Pr. robi), LL. rubinus, robinus, fr. L. rubeus red, reddish, akin to ruber. See Rouge, red.]1. (Min.) A precious stone of a carmine red color, sometimes verging to violet, or intermediate between carmine and hyacinth red. It is a red crystallized variety of corundum. Note: Besides the true or Oriental ruby above defined, there are the balas ruby, or ruby spinel, a red variety of spinel, and the rock ruby, a red variety of garnet. Of rubies, sapphires, and pearles white. --Chaucer. 2. The color of a ruby; carmine red; a red tint. The natural ruby of your cheeks. --Shak. 3. That which has the color of the ruby, as red wine. Hence, a red blain or carbuncle. 4. (Print.) See Agate, n., 2. [Eng.] 5. (Zo["o]l.) Any species of South American humming birds of the genus Clytol[ae]ma. The males have a ruby-colored throat or breast. Ruby of arsenic, Ruby of sulphur (Chem.), a glassy substance of a red color and a variable composition, but always consisting chiefly of the disulphide of arsenic; -- called also ruby sulphur. Ruby of zinc (Min.), zinc sulphide; the mineral zinc blende or sphalerite. Ruby silver (Min.), red silver. See under Red.Ruby
Ru"by\, a. Ruby-colored; red; as, ruby lips.Cite This Source
ruby
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ruby (r 'bē) Pronunciation Key
A deep-red, translucent variety of the mineral corundum, containing small amounts of chromium and valued as a gem. Compare sapphire. |
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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Ruby language
1. A relational language designed by Jones and M. Sheeran in 1986 for describing and designing circuits (a hardware description language). Ruby programs denote binary relations and programs are built-up inductively from primitive relations using a pre-defined set of relational operators. Ruby programs also have a geometric interpretation as networks of primitive relations connected by wires, which is important when layout is considered in circuit design.
Ruby has been continually developed since 1986, and has been used to design many different kinds of circuits, including systolic arrays, butterfly networks and arithmetic circuits.
(ftp://ftp.cs.chalmers.se/pub/misc/ruby/).
E-mail:
["Ruby - A Language of Relations and Higher-Order Functions", M. Sheeran, Proc 3rd Banff Workshop on Hardware Verification, Springer 1990].
(1994-10-27)
2. One of five pedagogical languages based on Markov algorithms, used in Higman's report (below). The other languages are Brilliant, Diamond, Nonpareil, and Pearl.
["Nonpareil, a Machine Level Machine Independent Language for the Study of Semantics", B. Higman, ULICS Intl Report No ICSI 170, U London (1968)].
(1994-10-27)
3. A fully object oriented interpreted scripting language by Yukihiro Matsumoto
Similar in scope to Perl and Python, Ruby has high-level data types, automatic memory management, dynamic typing, a module system, exceptions, and a rich standard library. Other features are CLU-style iterators for loop abstraction, singleton classes/methods and lexical closures.
In Ruby, everything is an object, including the basic data types. For example, the number 1 is an instance of class Fixnum.
Current version (stable): 1.6.7, as of 2002-03-01.
Ruby Home.
Ruby Central.
["Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide", David Thomas, Andrew Hunt, Yukihiro Matsumoto pub. Addison Wesley 2000].
(2002-06-19)
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Ruby
(Heb. peninim), only in plural (Lam. 4:7). The ruby was one of the stones in the high priest's breastplate (Ex. 28:17). A comparison is made between the value of wisdom and rubies (Job 28:18; Prov. 3:15; 8:11). The price of a virtuous woman is said to be "far above rubies" (Prov. 31:10). The exact meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain. Some render it "red coral;" others, "pearl" or "mother-of-pearl."
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