processes

Noun

process (plural processes)

1. A series of events leading to a result or product.
   • This product of last month's quality standards committee is quite good, even though the process was flawed.
2. The set of procedures used in the manufacture of a product, especially in the food and chemical industries.
   • 1960, Mack Tyner, Process Engineering Calculations: Material and Energy Balances – Ordinarily a process plant will use a steam boiler to supply its process heat requirements and to drive a steam-turbine generator.
3. A path or succession of states through which a system passes.
   • We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012, page 23
4. Successive physiological responses to keep or restore health.
5. Documents issued by a court in the course of a lawsuit or action at law, such as a summons, mandate, or writ.
   • But if either at Calling by the Clerk, after the Session Bell, or before the Ordinary by the Roll, an Advocat compears, and craves to be Marked for the Defender, and to see the Process; The Clerk in the first Case, and the Judge in the second, will allow him to see it1711, John Spotiswood, The Form of Process, section 39
6. An outgrowth of tissue arising above a surface, such as might form part of a joint or the attachment point for a muscle.

See all 14 meanings of process