window
/ˈwɪndəʊ
/noun
1An opening in the wall or roof of a building or vehicle, fitted with glass in a frame to admit light or air and allow people to see out.The apartments and penthouses have double-glazed redwood framed windows, fitted kitchens and gas-fired central heating....
- All the houses will have a traditional look with curved timber framed windows, decorative roof detail and over-door pediments.
- It has wider hallways, higher ceilings, more windows admitting more natural light and more places for students to hang out.
Synonyms
casement, opening, aperture
1.1A pane of glass filling a window: thieves smashed a window and took £600...
- The windows were single pane glass that was stained with smoke, dirt, and the oils from human skin.
- Some teachers say they are too afraid to stay behind after school and such has been the ferocity of the attacks that classrooms were littered with shards of glass from smashed windows.
- I have lost count of the number of smashed plate glass windows in the town centre, and not just isolated premises, often several at a time.
1.2An opening in a wall or screen through which customers are served in a bank, ticket office, or similar building.I ran across the street to get into the office. There were several customers at the windows, some being served, others waiting to be served....
- It is anything but out of the ordinary, too, for the ‘sell-out’ signs to be posted on the ticket office windows of the arena.
- They were carrying a hammer which they banged on the security windows of the bank as they demanded money.
1.3A space behind the window of a shop where goods are displayed for sale: [as modifier]: beautiful window displays...
- Food-themed window displays in many shops and businesses in the town also added extra interest.
- I try to focus on the window displays of the shops that we pass instead of focusing on him.
- Almost 50 town centre shops are giving up some of their window space to support carnival week.
1.4A means of observing and learning about something: television is a window on the world...
- Watching Apollo 11 crew member Michael Collins shave is like having a window into a Heinlein novel.
- The actors performed A Doll's House, written by Ibsen, which provides a window on the life of a seemingly happy family.
- When a keen reader writes about their reading, they are opening a window into their soul, and inviting you to step inside and share a holy thing.
2A transparent panel on an envelope to show an address.This results in yellowed envelopes, shrunken address windows, and brittle paper....
- Police say the first four letters were sent using window envelopes, with the Elland Road address showing through the window.
- Do you feel obliged to tear out plastic windows in envelopes before recycling them?
3 Computing A framed area on a display screen for viewing information.The viewer gets the video and audio directly into his Internet browser window....
- Other differences relate to the rules for entering a phrase into the search engine phrase window.
- You may need to scroll or resize the pop-up image window to get a good view.
4An interval or opportunity for action: the parliamentary recess offers a good window for a bid...
- Events such as the VJ Hunt provide such windows of advertising opportunity.
- The Manchester victory has opened windows and doors of opportunity for New Oak.
- Such a window of ideological opportunity is unlikely to come again soon.
4.1An interval during which atmospheric and astronomical circumstances are suitable for the launch of a spacecraft.Unlike for Mars, lunar launch windows are effectively continuous....
- For a mission to Mars, such launch windows are available every twenty-six months, for only a couple months at a time.
- I notice that Jim Lamb is suiting up early and he's thinking that its time to go soon after the launch window opens.
5 Physics A range of electromagnetic wavelengths for which a medium (especially the atmosphere) is transparent.All of these windows are in infrared wavelengths, and they are narrow, like the gaps between the slats of a fence....
- A series of overlapping windows representing the full range of sequence divergence were defined.
6 [mass noun] Strips of metal foil dispersed in the air to obstruct radar detection.
Military code word
Phrases
go out (of) the window
window of opportunity
window of vulnerability
the windows of the soul
Origin
Middle English: from Old Norse vindauga, from vindr 'wind' + auga 'eye'.
Window is from Old Norse vindauga, which literally meant ‘wind eye’. Before that the Anglo-Saxons words were éagthyrl and éagduru, ‘eye hole’ and ‘eye door’. Early windows would generally have been just openings in a wall, sometimes with shutters or curtains. The computing sense ‘a framed area on a screen for viewing information’ was first recorded in 1974, and in 1985 Microsoft released the first version of its Windows operating system. See also eye