exit
    n 1: an opening that permits escape or release; "he blocked the
         way out"; "the canyon had only one issue" [syn: exit,
         issue, outlet, way out]
    2: euphemistic expressions for death; "thousands mourned his
       passing" [syn: passing, loss, departure, exit,
       expiration, going, release]
    3: the act of going out
    v 1: move out of or depart from; "leave the room"; "the fugitive
         has left the country" [syn: exit, go out, get out,
         leave] [ant: come in, enter, get in, get into,
         go in, go into, move into]
    2: lose the lead
    3: pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and
       functions necessary to sustain life; "She died from cancer";
       "The children perished in the fire"; "The patient went
       peacefully"; "The old guy kicked the bucket at the age of
       102" [syn: die, decease, perish, go, exit, pass
       away, expire, pass, kick the bucket, cash in one's
       chips, buy the farm, conk, give-up the ghost, drop
       dead, pop off, choke, croak, snuff it] [ant: be
       born]

Exit \Ex"it\ [L., 3d pers. sing. pres. of exire to go out. See
   Exeunt, Issue.]
   He (or she ) goes out, or retires from view; as, exit
   Macbeth.
   [1913 Webster]

   Note: The Latin words exit (he or she goes out), and exeunt (
         they go out), are used in dramatic writings to indicate
         the time of withdrawal from the stage of one or more of
         the actors.
         [1913 Webster]

Exit \Ex"it\, n. [See 1st Exit.]
   1. The departure of a player from the stage, when he has
      performed his part.
      [1913 Webster]

            They have their exits and their entrances. --Shak.
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   2. Any departure; the act of quitting the stage of action or
      of life; death; as, to make one's exit.
      [1913 Webster]

            Sighs for his exit, vulgarly called death. --Cowper.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. A way of departure; passage out of a place; egress; way
      out.
      [1913 Webster]

            Forcing the water forth through its ordinary exits.
                                                  --Woodward.
      Exitial

exit

   1.  A library function in the C and Unix
   run-time library that causes the program to terminate and
   return control to the shell.  The alternative to calling
   "exit" is simply to "fall off the end" of the program or its
   top-level, main, routine.

   Equivalent functions, possibly with different names, exist in
   pretty much every programming language, e.g. "exit" in
   Microsoft DOS or "END" in BASIC.

   On exit, the run-time system closes open files and releases
   other resources.  An exit status code (a small integer, with
   zero meaning OK and other values typically indicating some
   kind of error) can be passed as the only argument to "exit";
   this will be made available to the shell.  Some languages
   allow the programmer to set up exit handler code which will be
   called before the standard system clean-up actions.

   2. Any point in a piece of code where control is returned to
   the caller, possibly activating one or more user-provided exit
   handlers.  This might be a return statement, exit call (in
   sense 1 above) or code that raises an error condition (either
   intentionally or unintentionally).  If the exit is from the
   top-level routine then such a point would typically terminate
   the whole program, as in sense 1.

   (2008-05-15)