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stream

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stream

[streem]
–noun
1. a body of water flowing in a channel or watercourse, as a river, rivulet, or brook.
2. a steady current in water, as in a river or the ocean: to row against the stream; the Gulf Stream.
3. any flow of water or other liquid or fluid: streams of blood.
4. a current or flow of air, gas, or the like.
5. a beam or trail of light: A stream of moonlight fell from the clouds.
6. a continuous flow or succession of anything: a stream of words.
7. prevailing direction; drift: the stream of opinion.
–verb (used without object)
8. to flow, pass, or issue in a stream, as water, tears, or blood.
9. to send forth or throw off a stream; run or flow (often fol. by with): eyes streaming with tears.
10. to extend in a beam or in rays, as light: Sunlight streamed in through the windows.
11. to move or proceed continuously like a flowing stream, as a procession.
12. to wave or float outward, as a flag in the wind.
13. to hang in a loose, flowing manner, as long hair.
–verb (used with object)
14. to send forth or discharge in a stream: The wound streamed blood.
15. to cause to stream or float outward, as a flag.
16. Nautical. to place (an object) in the water at the end of a line attached to a vessel.
17. on stream, in or into operation: The factory will be on stream in a month.

Origin:
bef. 900; (n.) ME streem, OE strēam; c. G Strom, ON straumr; akin to Gk rheîn to flow (see rheum ); (v.) ME streamen, deriv. of the n.


streamless, adjective
streamlike, adjective


1. rill, run, streamlet, runnel. Stream, current refer to a steady flow. In this use they are interchangeable. In the sense of running water, however, a stream is a flow that may be as small as a brook or as large as a river: A number of streams have their sources in mountains. Current refers to the most rapidly moving part of the stream: This river has a swift current. 2. flow, tide. 6. torrent, rush. 8. pour.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To stream
stream   (strēm)   
n.  
    1. A flow of water in a channel or bed, as a brook, rivulet, or small river.

    2. A steady current in such a flow of water.

  1. A steady current of a fluid.

  2. A steady flow or succession: a stream of insults. See Synonyms at flow.

  3. A trend, course, or drift, as of opinion, thought, or history.

  4. A beam or ray of light.

  5. Chiefly British A course of study to which students are tracked.

v.   streamed, stream·ing, streams

v.   intr.
  1. To flow in or as if in a stream.

  2. To pour forth or give off a stream; flow: My eyes were streaming with tears.

  3. To come or go in large numbers; pour: Traffic was streaming by. Fan mail streamed in.

  4. To extend, wave, or float outward: The banner streamed in the breeze.

    1. To leave a continuous trail of light.

    2. To give forth a continuous stream of light rays or beams; shine.

v.   tr.
  1. To emit, discharge, or exude (a body fluid, for example).

  2. Computer Science To transmit (data) in real time, especially over the Internet.


[Middle English streme, from Old English strēam; see sreu- in Indo-European roots.]
stream'y adj.
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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Medical Dictionary

Main Entry: stream
Pronunciation: 'strEm
Function: noun
: an unbroken current or flow (as of water, a bodily fluid, a gas, or particles of matter) —seeBLOODSTREAM, MIDSTREAM
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
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Science Dictionary
stream   (strēm)  Pronunciation Key 
  1. A flow of water in a channel or bed, as a brook, rivulet, or small river.

  2. A flow of a watery substance, such as blood in blood vessels or cytoplasm in fungal hyphae, in an organism or in part of an organism.


The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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Computing Dictionary

STREAM
["STREAM: A Scheme Language for Formally Describing Digital Circuits", C.D. Kloos in PARLE: Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, LNCS 259, Springer 1987].
(1995-01-30)

stream
1. An abstraction referring to any flow of data from a source (or sender, producer) to a single sink (or receiver, consumer). A stream usually flows through a channel of some kind, as opposed to packets which may be addressed and routed independently, possibly to multiple recipients. Streams usually require some mechanism for establishing a channel or a "connection" between the sender and receiver.
2. In the C language's buffered input/ouput library functions, a stream is associated with a file or device which has been opened using fopen. Characters may be read from (written to) a stream without knowing their actual source (destination) and buffering is provided transparently by the library routines.
3. Confusingly, Sun have called their modular device driver mechanism "STREAMS".
4. In IBM's AIX operating system, a stream is a full-duplex processing and data transfer path between a driver in kernel space and a process in user space.
[IBM AIX 3.2 Communication Programming Concepts, SC23-2206-03].
5. streaming.
6. lazy list.
(1996-11-06)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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