x

Definitions

General English

  • noun the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet, between W and Y
  • noun
    (written as X)
    the Roman numeral for ten or tenth
  • symbol fora multiplication sign
  • symbol forshowing size
  • noun great happiness
  • noun a dangerous drug which makes you have hallucinations

Economics

  • (written as X)
    In economic models involving international trade, X is usually chosen to represent exports, and M to represent imports, perhaps because E and I have too many other uses.

Electronics

  • symbol for X-coordinate, or abscissa.
  • symbol forreactance
    (written as X)

Information & Library Science

  • noun a symbol used when the name of a person, place or amount is unspecified or to be kept secret

Media Studies

  • noun
    (written as X)
    a censorship classification used in the UK until 1982 for films that could not be shown publicly to anyone under 18 and until 1990 in the United States for films considered unsuitable for under-17s

Slang

  • noun
    (written as X)
    a kiss. A teenagers’ term, from the use of the letter x to symbolize a kiss at the end of a letter. The word is used in phrases such as ‘give us an x’ or, as an affectionate exclamation, ‘x, x, x!’.
  • noun
    (written as X)
    the drug ecstasy
  • symbol forecstasy
    (written as X)
  • noun the drug MDMA (3,4 methylene dioxy methamphetamine). A preparation which was synthesised and patented in 1914 and rediscovered for recreational use in 1975 in the USA. The drug, related to speed, remained a minority taste until the early 1980s; it was used by Californian therapists among others and was legal until 1985. It is also known as E, Epsom salts, X and adam.

Computing

  • symbol forX-Window System
    (written as X)
  • symbol forextension
    (written as X)

Medical

  • noun feeling of extreme happiness
  • noun a powerful stimulant and hallucinatory illegal drug

Origin

  • Etymologically, someone who is ecstatic is out of his or her mind. The word comes, via Old French extasie and late Latin extasis, from Greek ékstasis, a derivative of the verb existánai ‘displace, drive out of one’s mind’. this was a compound formed from the prefix ek- ‘out’ and histánai ‘place’ (a distant relative of English stand). The underlying notion of being ‘beside oneself, in the grip of extreme passion’ survives in modern English in relation to mystic experiences or trances, and also, albeit archaically, in such phrases as ‘an ecstasy of rage’, and the specific sense ‘delight’ developed only comparatively recently, apparently in the 17th century.
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