Word.ws English Dictionary

crontab

crontab noun: a table of commands to be executed periodically.

Noun

crontab (plural crontabs)

  1. (Unix) A table of commands to be executed periodically.
    • The purpose of /etc/crontab is different from that of individual users' crontabs. With /etc/crontab, root may specify which user will run a particular command.2008, Michael Lucas, Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD

Forms of crontab

pluralcrontabs

Origin of crontab

Shortening of cron table, where cron is the name of the system program that handles these tasks, from Ancient Greek χρόνος (khrónos, “time”).

Questions about crontab

What does crontab mean?
Crontab means a table of commands to be executed periodically.
What part of speech is crontab?
Crontab is a noun.
What is the plural of crontab?
The plural of crontab is crontabs.

Words near crontab in the dictionary

  1. Cronos
  2. Cronquist system
  3. Crons
  4. Cronstadt Island
  5. cronstedtite
  6. crontab
  7. crontabs
  8. Cronulla
  9. Cronus
  10. cronusite
  11. cronut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crontab (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “crontab.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crontab. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.