1often access tomass noun The means or opportunity to approach or enter a place.

1. 1.1The right or opportunity to use or benefit from something.
   ‘do you have access to a computer?’
   More example sentences

   • ‘awards to help people gain access to training’
   • ‘It is not a policy issue as to whether people should have access to water or not, people are naturally entitled to have access.’
   • ‘Ensure that next year's influx of students have access to properly funded clubs and resources.’
   • ‘It's right and proper that teachers have access to the full process of judicial review, which by its thorough nature, will take time.’
   • ‘That is the debate over whether illegal aliens should have access to health care and other benefits.’
   • ‘He also asked officials if members would still have access to the community fund set up to benefit local groups in the town.’
   • ‘But the report dismisses claims that Leeds is swamped by asylum seekers who have access to a wide range of benefits.’
   • ‘He said across the country as few as one per cent of all those who could benefit from such care have access to it.’
   • ‘They have access to health and life insurance through their employers, or at their own expense.’
   • ‘These sections entitle everyone to have access to health care services provided by the state within its available resources.’
   • ‘If the common people have access to those technologies, do you know what they will do?’
   • ‘A benefit of this is that most sailors will now have access to more courses than those associated with their billet.’
   • ‘In principle this meant developing countries should have the right to have access to cheap generic drugs.’
   • ‘Operators have access to a wide range of information and experts within Defence.’
   • ‘In particular, it recommends that all children should have access to publicly funded education from the age of three.’
   • ‘The deal we're negotiating is for all universities to have access to all journals electronically.’
   • ‘Officers on the Operation Delta squad have access to the latest computer technology to hunt for burglars.’
   • ‘If people opt out of the NHS, why should they have access to public money to smooth their treatment?’
   • ‘Women have the right to divorce, inherit property, conduct business and have access to knowledge.’
   • ‘Now, who do you think would have access to the resources needed for a well organised covert operation like that?’
   Synonyms

   use of, the use of, the opportunity to use, permission to use

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2. 1.2The right or opportunity to approach or see someone.
   ‘we were denied access to our grandson’
   More example sentences

   • ‘This group aims to support fathers who suffer after marital disputes, for example by being denied access to their children by the mother.’
   • ‘At the same time union representatives were denied access to members and were not faxed requested safety reports.’
   • ‘Ms. Stewart did not have her speech limited nor were students denied access to her as you suggest.’
   • ‘Another parent was one of two fathers who was denied access to their children for years.’
   • ‘This happened recently when she had just given birth in a local hospital and her husband was denied access to see the baby.’
   • ‘He was released in August, but remained suspended from the exercise of his offices and was denied access to the Queen.’
   • ‘Then in 1988, on a visit to the prison, she was denied access to her husband.’
   • ‘In the meantime there are sources of support and advice for men denied access to their children by mothers.’
   • ‘Straw has claimed that British consular staff were denied access to the detainees.’
   • ‘During that time he was never told he was under arrest and was denied access to a solicitor.’
   • ‘That he also will be denied access to his players in the dressing room before kick-off has led the manager to believe that he is being unduly punished.’
   • ‘While held in Camp Delta, he was denied access to a lawyer and quizzed by the British Secret Service.’
   • ‘In 1536 she died at Kimbolton House; she was in considerable pain due to cancer and had been denied access to her only daughter.’
   • ‘Hishamudin ruled that their detention was unlawful and done in bad faith as they were denied access to family members and lawyers.’
   • ‘Kujinga, who was initially denied access to his client, was finally allowed to see her by mid-afternoon.’
   • ‘Being denied access to their fathers, through no doing of their own.’
   • ‘The group Human Rights in China reported in May that Gao was being denied access to her attorneys.’
   • ‘He was denied access to a solicitor for 24 hours, but his solicitor did not in fact see him until the day after the expiry of this period.’
   • ‘Arising out of this Hernon was denied access to his daughter for three years.’
   • ‘And now that this has happened, they insist that they have some right to have access to him.’
   • ‘Most applications for access come from estranged fathers.’
   Synonyms

   admission, admittance, entry, entrée, ingress, right of entry, permission to enter, the opportunity to enter

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3. 1.3The process of obtaining or retrieving information stored in a computer's memory.
   ‘this prevents unauthorized access or inadvertent deletion of the file’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Memory data accesses are hundreds of times faster than disk.’
   • ‘This execution involves performing arithmetic and logical calculations, initiating memory accesses, and controlling the flow of program execution.’
   • ‘Virtual Interface Architecture is a new method or establishing application-to-application remote memory accesses over a network.’
   • ‘JAVA is a strongly typed language, and its virtual memory environment imposes a restriction on valid memory accesses.’
   • ‘The window typically is narrow, only about 128MB or so, and any accesses to physical memory outside this window are not remapped.’
   • ‘This provides minimal memory consumption, but accesses take more time due to the page faults handling.’
   • ‘We knew that the processor would do a memory access at the time when the corruption would occur.’
   • ‘The problem lies in conflicting accesses to a block of memory by both the AGP processor and the CPU.’
   • ‘If we now call overbroad subpoenas an unauthorized access, then unwanted e-mail is a trespass.’
   • ‘Lock fields are used to coordinate multi-thread and multi-user accesses.’
   • ‘CC Winstone is running its scripts flat out, so any disk accesses will also likely hammer the CPU.’
   • ‘The MM reads the page table entry and uses the VMA to find out whether the memory access is legal or not.’
   • ‘Even an experienced programmer might have a hard time tracking down bugs caused by invalid accesses, overflowing writes, accesses to dead memory, memory leaks and the like.’
   • ‘This is a Trojan designed to open a backdoor access to compromised computer.’
   • ‘In some cases the value and utility of data is actually increasing as data ages even if the accesses to that data decline.’
   • ‘For these applications, threads are needed to provide concurrent accesses to shared data.’
   • ‘Storage bottlenecks occur when the business encounters a combination of repetitive file accesses, and large program and data files that strain storage resources.’
   • ‘In real life, you'd rarely see the hard drive hammered in this way - most of the time, disk accesses occur relatively infrequently, or only last for relatively short periods of time.’
   • ‘In theory the larger cache improves performance because there is a reduction in the number of physical accesses to the disk.’
   • ‘He is suspected of breaking Japanese laws prohibiting unauthorised computer access.’
4. 1.4as modifier Denoting broadcasting produced by minority and specialist interest groups, rather than by professionals.
   ‘access television’
   More example sentences

   • ‘The evolution of access broadcasting has produced a different kind of anxiety.’
   • ‘The forum will be aired on local public access television prior to Election Day.’

2literary in singular An attack or outburst of an emotion.

1Approach or enter (a place)

2Obtain or retrieve (computer data or a file)