crayon

crayon,

any drawing material available in stick form. The term includes charcoal, conte crayon, chalk, pastel, grease crayon, litho crayon, and children's wax colors. The pigment is often bound with gum tragacanth or wax, and the sticks are wrapped in paper or embedded in wood.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™ Copyright © 2013, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/

crayon

[′krā‚än]

(graphic arts)

A small stick for drawing, usually made of a combination of pigments or dyes in a wax or oil medium.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

crayon

1. a small stick or pencil of charcoal, wax, clay, or chalk mixed with coloured pigment

2. a drawing made with crayons

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

crayon

(1)

Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk, probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective of gender). Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to be described as crayons.

crayon

(2)

A computron that participates only in number crunching.

crayon

(3)

A unit of computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a free sharpener.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)