interpreted
    adj 1: understood in a certain way; made sense of; "a word taken
           literally"; "a smile taken as consent"; "an open door
           interpreted as an invitation" [syn: interpreted,
           taken]

Interpret \In*ter"pret\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Interpreted; p.
   pr. & vb. n. Interpreting.] [F. interpr[^e]ter, L.
   interpretari, p. p. interpretatus, fr. interpres interpeter,
   agent, negotiator; inter between + (prob.) the root of
   pretium price. See Price.]
   [1913 Webster]
   1. To explain or tell the meaning of; to expound; to
      translate orally into intelligible or familiar language or
      terms; to decipher; to define; -- applied esp. to
      language, but also to dreams, signs, conduct, mysteries,
      etc.; as, to interpret the Hebrew language to an
      Englishman; to interpret an Indian speech.
      [1913 Webster]

            Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
                                                  --Matt. i. 23.
      [1913 Webster]

            And Pharaoh told them his dreams; but there was none
            that could interpret them unto Pharaoh. --Gen. xli.
                                                  8.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. To apprehend and represent by means of art; to show by
      illustrative representation; as, an actor interprets the
      character of Hamlet; a musician interprets a sonata; an
      artist interprets a landscape.

   Syn: To translate; explain; solve; render; expound;
        elucidate; decipher; unfold; unravel.
        [1913 Webster]

interpreter
interpreted

    A program which executes other programs.  This
   is in contrast to a compiler which does not execute its
   input program (the "source code") but translates it into
   executable "machine code" (also called "object code")
   which is output to a file for later execution.  It may be
   possible to execute the same source code either directly by an
   interpreter or by compiling it and then executing the machine
   code produced.

   It takes longer to run a program under an interpreter than to
   run the compiled code but it can take less time to interpret
   it than the total required to compile and run it.  This is
   especially important when prototyping and testing code when an
   edit-interpret-debug cycle can often be much shorter than an
   edit-compile-run-debug cycle.

   Interpreting code is slower than running the compiled code
   because the interpreter must analyse each statement in the
   program each time it is executed and then perform the desired
   action whereas the compiled code just performs the action.
   This run-time analysis is known as "interpretive overhead".
   Access to variables is also slower in an interpreter because
   the mapping of identifiers to storage locations must be done
   repeatedly at run time rather than at compile time.

   There are various compromises between the development speed
   when using an interpreter and the execution speed when using a
   compiler.  Some systems (e.g. some Lisps) allow interpreted
   and compiled code to call each other and to share variables.
   This means that once a routine has been tested and debugged
   under the interpreter it can be compiled and thus benefit from
   faster execution while other routines are being developed.
   Many interpreters do not execute the source code as it stands
   but convert it into some more compact internal form.  For
   example, some BASIC interpreters replace keywords with
   single byte tokens which can be used to index into a jump
   table.  An interpreter might well use the same lexical
   analyser and parser as the compiler and then interpret the
   resulting abstract syntax tree.

   There is thus a spectrum of possibilities between interpreting
   and compiling, depending on the amount of analysis performed
   before the program is executed.  For example Emacs Lisp is
   compiled to "byte-code" which is a highly compressed and
   optimised representation of the Lisp source but is not machine
   code (and therefore not tied to any particular hardware).
   This "compiled" code is then executed (interpreted) by a byte
   code interpreter (itself written in C).  The compiled code
   in this case is machine code for a virtual machine which
   is implemented not in hardware but in the byte-code
   interpreter.

   See also partial evaluation.

   (1995-01-30)