exit
Definitions
General English
- noun a way out of a building or area
- noun a road that leads off a motorway, big main road or roundabout
- verb to leave a computer system
- verb to leave a place
Accounting
- noun the way in which an investor can realise their investment, e.g. by selling the company they have invested in
Aviation
- noun the act of going out of a place
Commerce
- noun the act of leaving a job
Computing
- noun (written as EXIT)an MS-DOS system command to stop and leave a child process and return to the parent process
- verb to stop program execution or to leave a program and return control to the operating system or interpreter
Construction
- That part of an exit system that, because of its separation from the rest of the building by devices such as walls, doors, and floors, provides a reasonably safe and protected emergency escape route from a building.
Economics
- noun the act of leaving a market, usually because of losses incurred
Electronics
- In computers, to get out of an operation, routine, or program. For instance, to exit a calling routine and return control to the program that initiated the call.
- A point at which an exit (1) may, or does take place.
Theater
- see stage direction.
Origin & History of “exit”
Ultimately, exit is the same word as English issue. both come from Latin exīre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and īre ‘go’. this Latin verb, which can be traced back to an Indo-European base *ei-, also produced English coitus (18th c.), obituary, and transient (as well as the French future tense irai ‘will go’). The earliest use of exit in English was as a stage direction (it means literally ‘he or she goes out’ in Latin). The sense ‘way out’ is a late 17th-century development, the more concrete ‘door by which one leaves’ as recent as the late 19th century.
