burst
Definitions
General English
- noun a sudden loud sound
- noun a sudden effort or activity
- verb to break open or explode suddenly, or cause something to break open or explode suddenly
Aviation
- noun a minor explosion caused by increased pressure
- noun a very short period of activity followed by no activity
Cars & Driving
- verb to explode and lose all its air very suddenly
Computing
- noun a short isolated sequence of transmitted signals
Electronics
- An abrupt increase in the strength of a signal.
- A signal resulting from an abrupt and intense increase in a magnitude.
- In a TV receiver, a color-synchronizing signal at the beginning of each scanning line, which establishes a frequency and phase reference for the chrominance signal. Also called color burst, color-sync signal, or reference burst.
- A block of data which is transferred as a unit, and without interruption.
Information & Library Science
- noun an amount of data sent or received in one operation
Marketing
- noun a large number of advertisements for a product placed over a short period
Military
- noun the firing of a series of bullets rapidly
Origin & History of “burst”
In Old English, burst meant simply ‘break suddenly and sharply’; the modern connotation of ‘breaking open owing to internal pressure’ developed in the 16th century. The word comes from a prehistoric west and north Germanic *brestan, which can be traced back to an Indo-European base *bhrest- (this has been linked with medieval Irish brosc ‘noise’).
