bootstrapping

Verb

bootstrap (third-person singular simple present bootstraps, present participle bootstrapping, simple past and past participle bootstrapped)

1. To help (oneself) without the aid of others.
   • Sam spent years bootstrapping himself through college.
2. To load the operating system into the memory of a computer. Usually shortened to boot.
3. To compile the tools that will be used to compile the rest of a system or program.
   • Bootstrapping means building the GNU C Library, GNU Compiler Collection and several other key system programs.Gentoo X86 Handbook
4. (broadly) To build or put together (something) by first building or putting together the tools, building blocks, ideas, etc., necessary to build (the thing).
   • And she finds the plan. She doesn't remember it; she bootstraps it from first principles, in a handful of minutes, just like she's done a hundred times before.2016 January 1, qntm, “Your Last First Day”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 04 Sep 2024
5. To employ a bootstrap method.
6. To expand or advance an activity or a collection based solely on previous actions, work, findings, etc.
   • Gradually, more and more terms were discovered, especially as there was a tendency in the literature to list a number of related terms together, thus allowing me to bootstrap new terms found accompanying those originally searched for.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 5

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