Word.ws English Dictionary

syscall

syscall noun: a software request for a service from the operating system kernel.

Noun

syscall (plural syscalls)

  1. A software request for a service from the operating system kernel.
    • At an assembly code level, when a process wants to make a syscall, it will load the syscall number into the EAX register[…]2009, Jatinder N. D. Gupta, Sushil K. Sharma, Handbook of research on information security and assurance
    • In addition, the relatively slow scalar CPU of the SX-9 and high cost of context switches (interrupts, syscalls) due to the huge context that needs to be stored away (like vector registers) contribute their part to the very poor UDP performance.2010, Michael Resch, Katharina Benkert, Xin Wang, High Performance Computing on Vector Systems 2010, page 57

Forms of syscall

pluralsyscalls

Origin of syscall

Clipped compound of system call.

Questions about syscall

What does syscall mean?
Syscall means a software request for a service from the operating system kernel.
What part of speech is syscall?
Syscall is a noun.
What is the plural of syscall?
The plural of syscall is syscalls.

Words near syscall in the dictionary

  1. sysadmins
  2. sysads
  3. sysape
  4. sysapes
  5. sysbiosis
  6. syscall
  7. syscalls
  8. syscourse
  9. syscoveries
  10. syscoversary
  11. syscovery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: syscall (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: “syscall.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/syscall. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.