compute

17th century. Borrowed from French computer, from Latin computō (“calculate, compute”). Doublet of count.

• enPR: kəm-pyo͞ot'
  • (UK) IPA^(key): /kəmˈpjuːt/

    • Audio (Southern England):

      (file)

  • (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /kəmˈpjut/

    • Audio (Aurora, Colorado):

      (file)

  • (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /kəmˈpjʉːt/
• Hyphenation: com‧pute
• Rhymes: -uːt

compute (third-person singular simple present computes, present participle computing, simple past and past participle computed)

1. (transitive) To reckon, calculate.

   Can anyone here compute the square root of 10201?

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker ; nd by Robert Boulter ; nd Matthias Walker, , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, lines 680–687:

     Effulgence of my Glorie, Son belov’d, / Son in whoſe face inviſible is beheld / Viſibly, what by Deitie I am, / And in whoſe hand what by Decree I doe, / Second Omnipotence, two dayes are paſt, / Two dayes, as we compute the dayes of Heav’n, / Since Michael and his Powers went forth to tame / Theſe diſobedient […]

   • 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt , London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     "When we have ascertained exactly how little will serve we shall be able to compute how long we shall be able to exist."

   • 2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 112:

     Coxhead (2000) computed that the AWL covered approximately 10% of the academic corpus from which it was derived[.]

2. (intransitive, informal) To make sense. (commonly used in mimicry of a science fictional robot and spoken in a robotic voice; most frequently in negative constructs)

   Does that compute, or do I need to explain further?

   • 1967 August 2, The Australian Women's Weekly, Sydney, page 46, column 2:

     And you'd feel an utter fool if, when you asked where the biscuit was, a message came out: "Biscuits do not compute. Your wife programmed your diet."

   • 1977 December 15, The Canberra Times, Australia Captial Territory, page 15, column 3:

     Guitarist Chris Stein is also against defining the music. When he sees a reporter with a notebook backstage after a concert he does robot impersonations saying, 'What is punk rock? What is punk rock? Brurruph, burruph, does not compute.'

compute (uncountable)

1. (chiefly cloud computing) Computational processing power.

   The GPU does not have enough on-chip SRAM memory for the parameters, and doesn't have enough compute for the entire model.

   • 2015, J. Powell, Mastering vRealize Automation 6.2, page 41:

     Once you have the total, does it exceed the maximum amount of compute that can be served up in your vCenter environment? It is quite normal for users to consume everything you provide.

   • 2016, Joe Baron, Hisham Baz, Tim Bixler, AWS Certified Solutions Architect Official Study Guide: Associate Exam:

     To change the amount of compute and memory, you can select a different DB Instance class of the database.

   • 2020, Prashila Naik, Hands-on Cloud Analytics with Microsoft Azure Stack‎, BPB Publications, →ISBN:

     Compute, in many cases, is decoupled from the storage, making it easy to charge and pay for only what is consumed. It also becomes easy to scale up the compute when needed depending on the type of service.

• “compute”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E Smith, editors (1911), “compute”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.pyt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophones: computent, computes

compute

1. inflection of computer:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• Hyphenation: com‧pu‧te

compute

1. inflection of computar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key): /komˈpute/
• Rhymes: -ute
• Syllabification: com‧pu‧te

compute

1. inflection of computar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative