Easter \Eas"ter\ ([=e]s"t[~e]r), n. [AS. e['a]ster, e['a]stran,
paschal feast, Easter; akin to G. ostern; fr. AS. E['a]stre,
a goddess of light or spring, in honor of whom a festival was
celebrated in April; whence this month was called in AS.
E['a]sterm[=o]na[eth]. From the root of E. east. See East.]
1. An annual church festival commemorating Christ's
resurrection, and occurring on Sunday, the second day
after Good Friday. It corresponds to the pascha or
passover of the Jews, and most nations still give it this
name under the various forms of pascha, pasque,
p[^a]que, or pask.
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2. The day on which the festival is observed; Easter day.
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Note: Easter is used either adjectively or as the first
element of a compound; as, Easter day or Easter-day,
Easter Sunday, Easter week, Easter gifts, Easter eggs.
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Sundays by thee more glorious break,
An Easter day in every week. --Keble.
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Note: Easter day, on which the rest of the movable feasts
depend, is always the first Sunday after the fourteenth
day of the calendar moon which (fourteenth day) falls
on, or next after, the 21st of March, according to the
rules laid down for the construction of the calendar;
so that if the fourteenth day happen on a Sunday,
Easter day is the Sunday after. --Eng. Cyc.
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Easter dues (Ch. of Eng.), money due to the clergy at
Easter, formerly paid in communication of the tithe for
personal labor and subject to exaction. For Easter dues,
Easter offerings, voluntary gifts, have been substituted.
Easter egg.
(a) A painted or colored egg used as a present at Easter.
(b) An imitation of an egg, in sugar or some fine
material, sometimes made to serve as a box for jewelry
or the like, used as an Easter present.
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Easter egg
n.
[from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and many parts
of Europe]
1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to
be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.
2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program (or, on a PC,
the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented set of commands or
keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program credits. One
well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes caused them to
respond to the command make love with not war?. Many personal computers
have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the
developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one
case) graphics images of the entire development team.
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easter egg
(From the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in
the US and many parts of Europe)
1. A message hidden in the object code of a program as a
joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or
browsing the code.
2. A message, graphic, sound effect, or other behaviour
emitted by a program (or, on an IBM PC, the BIOS ROM) in
response to some undocumented set of commands or keystrokes,
intended as a joke or to display program credits.
One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of
operating systems caused them to respond to the command
"make love" with "not war?". Many personal computers, and
even satellite control computers, have much more elaborate
eggs hidden in ROM, including lists of the developers' names
(e.g. Microsoft Windows 3.1x), political exhortations and
snatches of music. The Tandy Color Computer 3 (CoCo) had
images of the entire development team. Microsoft Excel 97
includes a flight simulator!
<http://eeggs.com/>.
[Jargon File]
(2003-06-23)
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