Definition of terminal in English:

terminal

Pronunciation /ˈtərmənl/

See synonyms for terminal

Translate terminal into Spanish

adjective

1attributive Of, forming, or situated at the end or extremity of something.
‘a terminal date’
- ‘the terminal tip of the probe’
- ‘Pending a detailed examination of the needs of the telecom sector, I propose to extend the terminal date to March 31, 2005.’
- ‘Those statutes set terminal dates for servants arriving without written indentures; in any event they seem to have applied only to English servants.’
- ‘The terminal date of 1914 offers a retrospective view of developments during the previous half-century.’
- ‘In the former case the charterer gives orders for the employment of the vessel which cannot reasonably be expected to be performed by the final terminal date.’
- ‘However, the pewter in the current exhibition leads one to extend the terminal date proposed by either author.’
- ‘Sometimes, even the terminal degree may be outside the direct disciplinary focus of the hiring department.’
- ‘As a terminal assessment at the end of the project, the children were asked to write another story about the same picture.’
end, extreme
final, last, concluding, closing, ultimate, finishing, terminating
View synonyms
1. 1.1Of or forming a transportation terminal.
  ‘terminal platforms’
  ‘The passengers were kept on the aircraft until 1200, at which point they were transported to the airfield's old terminal building.’
  ‘An airport security official, who did not want to be identified, said the bomb rocked the front of the terminal building, smashing windows and causing considerable damage.’
  ‘Upon arriving at the terminal building, I was astonished to see only one harried police officer whose job it was to ensure that cars weren't left unattended curbside.’
  ‘But police at the airport reviewed the decision and have asked wardens to enforce established rules which prohibit drivers from waiting near terminal buildings.’
  ‘A new control tower will be constructed away from the main terminal building and the Authority will also carry out an extension and refurbishing of the fire station.’
2. 1.2Zoology Situated at, forming, or denoting the end of a part or series of parts furthest from the center of the body.
  ‘the terminal segments of the antennae’
  ‘In many ammonites the terminal body chamber is relatively large, inflated, and with a constricted aperture or apertural appendages.’
  ‘The terminal segment carries a pair of silk-producing spinnerets.’
  ‘Each radial canal ends in a terminal tube foot, which has a sensory function.’
  ‘The terminal segment of the antenna is called the arista.’
  ‘Separately, a sample of somatic tissue (the terminal tip of the foot or adductor muscle) was also taken from each specimen.’
3. 1.3Botany (of a flower, inflorescence, etc.) borne at the end of a stem or branch.
  Often contrasted with axillary
  ‘terminal buds’
  ‘For plants that develop a terminal flower or inflorescence, the leaf number below the flower can be used to provide additional information about the timing of developmental events.’
  ‘Flower buds are borne on new shoots emerging from the terminal branches at the end of the cool, dry season.’
  ‘To obtain larger cut flowers, remove all but the terminal bud of each stem on the plant when the buds are small.’
  ‘Each branch has one terminal bud at the very end, and many lateral branches along the sides.’
  ‘Leaf length was measured from the tip of the terminal leaflet down to the base of the petiole at the site of attachment to the stem.’
2(of a disease) predicted to lead to death, especially slowly; incurable.
‘terminal cancer’
- ‘Because terminal illness and death are deeply personal experiences, the wishes of the dying patient should be considered.’
- ‘The authors of the essays in this book offer great insight into the issues surrounding terminal illness and impending death.’
- ‘To qualify for the study, participants had to have a life expectancy of six months or less and have terminal cancer or heart disease.’
- ‘The medal was presented to her shortly before her death from a terminal illness.’
- ‘A good number of people suffering from terminal illnesses like cancer or HIV infection or neurological problems also have been known to commit suicides.’
- ‘We have witnessed the birth of a first child, shared in the delivery of the news of a chronic terminal illness, and have been the last to hold the hand of a loved one.’
- ‘It is like watching someone dying a slow, painful death - like a terminal cancer.’
- ‘Alzheimer's disease is a progressive and terminal illness.’
- ‘These three patients show how chemotherapy can sometimes reverse the catastrophic physiological state of terminal cancer, even in seemingly hopeless cases.’
- ‘Bereavement often begins during a terminal disease phase and continues after the patient's death.’
- ‘I would expect the incidents of terminal diseases such as cancer or heart disease will increase if you don't do anything to prevent it.’
- ‘This disease is terminal and the death is slow and agonising.’
- ‘For example, someone with terminal cancer might write that they do not want to be put on a respirator (breathing machine) if they stop breathing.’
- ‘As highlighted in a recent review, the distinction between critical illness and terminal illness is often not easily made.’
- ‘People usually assume a terminal illness when thinking about the end of life.’
- ‘Her chest radiograph showed confluent shadowing associated with terminal disease.’
- ‘A poor nutritional status by itself is not necessarily a valid indication for gastrostomy placement as it may be the result of an advanced terminal disease.’
- ‘Nova Scotia has no hospices, so patients with terminal cancer must die in hospital or at home.’
- ‘Before I was 21, I had already lost one friend to a terminal disease, cancer.’
- ‘He died from terminal pneumonia in the coronary care unit that he had designed many years before.’
- ‘My illness is classed as life-threatening but not terminal.’
incurable, untreatable, inoperable, end-stage
View synonyms
1. 2.1attributive Suffering from or relating to a terminal disease.
  ‘a hospice for terminal cases’
  ‘So we have decided to do the best we can for her medically and offer her the dignity and compassion that we can, even if we know that what we really are offering is terminal care.’
  ‘Dying patients' rights to information about their condition are often, in practice, poorly protected in the context of terminal care.’
  ‘Now that the ‘natural death’ amendments have been passed by the legislature, I hope Taiwan will soon have more hospice wards to take care of terminal patients.’
  ‘Specialist hospices for people with advanced dementia, focusing on terminal care, have existed in the United States for some time.’
  ‘The family physician has the difficult task of helping the family make decisions about terminal care.’
  ‘Should the obligation to care for this terminal patient stand in the way of finding cures for the many patients who might suffer in the future?’
  ‘Under current law, euthanasia is restricted to terminal patients suffering unbearable pain with no hope of improvement, and who request to die when they are of sound mind.’
  dying, near death
  View synonyms
2. 2.2attributive (of a condition) forming the last stage of a terminal disease.
  ‘He is reported to be very ill; descriptions of his condition vary, but it seems possible that his condition is terminal.’
  ‘Doctors told the family her condition was terminal, although they don't link the standard of care she received with her death.’
  ‘Towards the end, she was in a terminal condition, not in a distant sense, but in the short-term, she was not absorbing the food that she was being given artificially by a PEG tube.’
  ‘She has undergone nine cardiac procedures as a result and her condition is terminal.’
  ‘In the terminal stages of this disease, the front hoof falls off, leaving the animal maimed for life.’
  ‘Skills in palliative care are an important component of good management in the terminal stages of the condition, and communication is particularly crucial at this point.’
  ‘There was no huge weight loss, she had a healthy appetite right up until the end, and while there was shortness of breath and difficulty breathing, it was not too severe until the very final terminal stages when she had to be put on oxygen.’
  ‘He was told she was in the terminal stages of the disease.’
  ‘There were even clubs opened for those in the terminal stages of HIV.’
  ‘I know about that because we have rehomed a black Pomeranian during the terminal stages of his owner's illness.’
  ‘Patients expressed a continuing need for hope even when they knew and accepted that they were in the terminal stages of disease and had a limited life expectancy.’
3. 2.3informal Extreme and usually beyond cure or alteration (used to emphasize the extent of something regarded as bad or unfortunate)
  ‘you're making a terminal ass of yourself’
  ‘There is an element of wanderlust, and a terminal lack of responsibility probably.’
  ‘The trouble with these surveys, aside from their terminal lack of point, is that they insist on making silly comparisons.’
  ‘If terminal disagreements occur, they would be allowed to reconsider their participation in the coalition agreement.’
  ‘But a terminal inability to remember to ask people if they wanted salt and vinegar meant that every other portion had to be unwrapped and rewrapped - by which time the paper was rendered useless.’
  ‘It's more that they think his political condition might now be terminal.’
  ‘‘The character on stage is a terminal fantasist,’ he said.’
  ‘The town is in terminal decline and has hardly anything to attract shoppers and visitors.’
  ‘Till then film-going nation-wide had been in an apparent terminal decline for years.’
  ‘Many people are very concerned that if farming goes into terminal decline our food supplies will have to come from abroad.’
  ‘I don't have anything personal against them - it just bugs me that they go on and on about the rough deal dealt to them and the fact that they say the service is in terminal decline.’
  ‘The game itself, in the face of financial chaos, seems in real danger of terminal collapse.’
  ‘A certain amount of hat-eating has taken place among his enemies, because congestion charging really works and has done much to alleviate the terminal gridlock that had central London in its grip.’
  ‘I doubt that low turnouts across Europe provide evidence of terminal apathy among the voters, far less that they signal the end of liberal democracy as we know it - as one commentator suggested last week.’
  ‘I try hard to keep track of the departing guests on the way out, but by the third hotel stop, I'm in a terminal muddle: no matter how many times I crosscheck with the pile of lists on my clipboard, I seem to be one down.’
  complete, utter, absolute, total, real, thorough, out-and-out, downright, consummate, perfect, veritable
  View synonyms

noun

1The end of a railroad or other transport route, or a station at such a point.
‘a freight terminal’
- ‘a ferry terminal’
- ‘The omnipresence of television is now reflected even in bus terminals, railway stations and, why even hospitals, he points out.’
- ‘Detectives believe they will try to flee the UK and all ports, airports, ferry terminals and railway stations were alerted to the possibility as soon as officers had details of their identities over a week ago.’
- ‘Interchanges between urban transport modes, terminals and stations are the locations where most barriers exist.’
- ‘And every time I am at Toronto's main railway or bus terminals I have an eye out for stray packages.’
- ‘The other features of the City include - a five star hotel, helipad international school, railway station, bus terminal, restaurants and a shopping complex.’
- ‘The peak flow of human traffic from the railway stations and from bus terminals will occur on Thursday.’
- ‘This means there's investment in railways and bus terminals as well as increased spending on display signs for motorways and parking.’
- ‘In the name of fighting terrorism, transit riders are now being subjected to random police searches and armed troops are patrolling busy terminals and subway stations.’
- ‘To those who control the narrow entry and export points - the container terminals - freight shipping is turning out to be liquid gold.’
- ‘Even so, I for one have long felt that these projects give more than they take by returning the pulse of life to great urban railroad terminals.’
- ‘At present, Ukraine's ports are able to process up to 15 per cent more freight than the rail terminals.’
- ‘The two girls walked out of the station towards the bus terminal.’
- ‘I checked in at the ferry terminal while my sister parked the car.’
- ‘The North and South coach yards were separated by the engine terminal.’
- ‘The transport strike involved around 10,000 workers at 70 bus and road haulage companies and 12 freight terminals.’
stopping place, stop, halt, station stop, stage
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1. 1.1A departure and arrival building for air passengers at an airport.
  ‘The Kansas City airport terminals were evacuated and passengers took shelter in tunnels, but there were no deaths reported in the metropolitan area of over one million people.’
  ‘The Government is set to give the go-ahead to the building of a second terminal at Dublin Airport before the summer.’
  ‘Passengers at airports and terminals across the country waited for hours for flights that did not materialise.’
  ‘The consultation document suggested building new terminals at Manchester Airport and raised the tentative prospect of a third runway even though the second one is just two years old.’
  ‘The counter is located in the baggage claim area in the airport terminal.’
  ‘The service can be accessed anywhere in the airport's four terminals for rates ranging from 35 cents a minute to $9 per day.’
  ‘The terminal was reopened and airport operations resumed after a bomb squad used a robot to remove the pipe-shaped object.’
  ‘‘I ride it through airport terminals, down the jetway and right to the plane,’ Pearl says.’
  ‘Preliminary planning for the facility's airline passenger terminal began early last month.’
  ‘You don't know the airport, the terminal, the airline, or the time of the flight.’
  ‘After landing safely, the passengers had to wait 10 hours in the airport terminal before resuming their journey in a replacement aircraft.’
  ‘It called for more rigorous training of the workers who screen passengers entering airport terminals.’
  ‘The airport offers both rental cars and courtesy transportation, as well as fuel, parking, a public telephone and restrooms in a passenger terminal and lounge.’
  ‘Interestingly, the biggest and most complex buildings in the country, the airport terminals, get built to time and to budget, but in the private sector.’
  ‘The new terminal will permit the airport to handle 35 million passengers a year, more than California's entire population.’
  ‘Just take a look at the planes that are lined up outside the general aviation terminal at your airport.’
  ‘The airport terminal was a tin-roofed shack that received just one international flight.’
  ‘An airline was condemned today for charging a passenger the equivalent of half his airfare to take him from the airport terminal to the plane in a wheelchair.’
  ‘But it may take some time yet for passengers to get used to navigating the new terminal, and for now airport staff are on hand to direct passengers around the terminal.’
  ‘Currently, both international and domestic services use the same terminal at the airport.’
  station, last stop, end of the line
  View synonyms
2. 1.2An installation where oil or gas is stored at the end of a pipeline or at a port.
  ‘What this assumption fails to take into account, however, is that the investment required to build the tankers and terminals to store this gas is very large.’
  ‘However, because of problems with the oil for food program, tankers were not able to lift the oil from the terminal at the Turkish port.’
  ‘The cost of constructing the pipelines and oil terminals in the south was earlier estimated at US $719 million.’
  ‘Keeping up activity levels is important because it makes infrastructure such as pipelines and terminals more efficient to build and run.’
  ‘For months, China and Japan had been vying to determine the terminal of the proposed pipeline from Siberian oil fields.’
  ‘You have about 14 U.N. inspectors at each of the two export terminals - one a pipeline going out of the northern fields and an export terminal in the south.’
  ‘In short, wholesale prices go down in summer when the nation requires less heating and the pipelines and storage terminals are full then rise in winter when the opposite happens.’
  ‘The capacity of both the pipeline and the terminal could double, reaching up to 120 million tons a year.’
  ‘From the oil reserves in the Caspian Sea the pipeline runs through Azerbaijan and Georgia to a tanker terminal on the coast of Turkey.’
  ‘Mazheikiu operates the only refinery in the Baltics and owns an oil terminal and pipelines.’
  ‘The terminal can store more than 12 000 cu m of bulk oil components at a time.’
  ‘He said the local authority has been continuously monitoring operations on the gas terminal and pipeline developments to ensure that planning conditions are not breached.’
  ‘Union members working in the offices were asked to stay at home and the union refused to allow crew changes at oil platforms and export terminals, but had not asked members there to down tools.’
  ‘A terminal for loading petroleum products will be added later.’
  ‘Tanker lorries fill up at the fuel terminals and deliver to petrol stations across the country but jet fuel is usually distributed through underground pipes.’
  ‘It isn't easy living on the Al Basra oil terminal.’
2A point of connection for closing an electric circuit.
‘battery terminals’
- ‘The zinc and the copper are the anode and cathode terminals of your potato battery.’
- ‘A circuit arrangement for supplying a discharge lamp with a direct current includes input terminals for connection to a supply voltage source.’
- ‘An electrical connection between a high voltage terminal and a spark plug head.’
- ‘An anode terminal is electrically connected to the portion of the anode lead wire extending from the anode body.’
- ‘The at least two terminals include two current control terminals for connection at two locations in another circuit.’
- ‘When you hook up a battery's two terminals to a circuit, the battery forces electrons to flow through the circuit from one terminal to the other.’
- ‘For that reason, it is generally not a good idea to connect the two terminals of a battery to one another directly.’
- ‘Its positive terminal is connected to the anode and its negative terminal to the cathode where the reduction of the metal ion takes place.’
- ‘And then I must have jiggled the machine slightly, causing the battery to make a proper connection with the terminals, because I suddenly got god knows how many volts straight across my forearm.’
- ‘The source of electricity will have two terminals: a positive terminal and a negative terminal.’
- ‘Electrons collect on the negative terminal of the battery.’
- ‘To test a spark plug, I put the ohmmeter probes on the center electrode and the wire terminal.’
- ‘Solemnly we counted down, and he connected the wire to the terminals of the lorry battery that powered the whole thing.’
- ‘It didn't have a discharge button and I wasn't about to experiment with short-circuiting the battery terminals.’
- ‘The positive and negative terminals of a battery are always, respectively, positive and negative.’
- ‘And yet, in Wales, at least in this part of Wales, it's been like nothing so much as having been wired to the terminals of a dead battery.’
- ‘Both have wires that attach to the battery terminals.’
- ‘I remember that last time I used it there was a crusty build up on the battery terminals, which is still there, so I wonder whether that could be the problem.’
- ‘Circuit breakers with plug-in-style quick-connect terminals simplify installation and replacement, and they may also be soldered.’
3A device at which a user enters data or commands for a computer system and which displays the received output.
‘Each morning intelligence analysts log on at their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system.’
- ‘Early terminals provided just a user interface, leaving the processing to powerful mainframes.’
- ‘Pollsters sit in front of a computer terminal and enter the responses they're given.’
- ‘She moved to the forward curved wall of the room and hummed quietly to herself as she tapped out a few commands on the computer terminal.’
- ‘Once the author finds an appropriate photo, the image is called up and displayed at the workstation terminal.’
- ‘Commanders of lower tactical units will use portable computer terminals to receive satellite-supplied information.’
- ‘A data processing terminal sends control commands to an external device to control the external device.’
- ‘Earlier we had even been allowed to briefly crowd into a tiny VIP room overlooking the actual computer terminals and huge data displays on the walls.’
- ‘I especially liked the computer terminals displaying the locations of various spaceships.’
- ‘Photographs of works may be displayed on the Museum's website or a computer terminal in the exhibition for educational purposes.’
- ‘Well, they have removed the round lunch tables from half of the press room and filled it all with rows of computer desks and terminals.’
- ‘A small information centre where there are a few terminals for net surfing as well as terminals for computer games are also part of the library.’
- ‘People had rushed to phones and computer terminals to call or e-mail loved ones to tell them that they were safe, she said, but added that the atmosphere was ‘solemn’.’
- ‘Crooks are preying on people using public access terminals for Internet banking.’
- ‘A very well groomed young woman sat at a computer terminal working on a spreadsheet.’
- ‘Other sessions were held in a traditional pharmaceutics lab that included several networked computer terminals.’
- ‘In manual processing you have to enter credit card information manually through an offline terminal.’
- ‘Every keystroke on the terminal goes over the network unencrypted.’
- ‘The latest phase of the installation will include terminals that offer email and internet services.’
- ‘Participants pay by touching a payment terminal at the checkout register.’
workstation, VDU, visual display unit, PC, input device, output device
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4
(also terminal figure)
another term for terminus (sense 3 of the noun)
‘Renditions of the heron are common in Celtic art, ranging from simple terminal figures to complex intertwined knotwork.’
- ‘The white statuary blockings carved with rosettes above terminal figures headed by a boy's head, each turned slightly differently and headed with ionic capitals which support the blockings.’
- ‘A terminal figure at the other end of Queen Mary Street would impress the view by giving something towards which to head.’