genuine

adj 1: not fake or counterfeit; "a genuine Picasso"; "genuine

leather" [ant: {counterfeit}]

2: not pretended; sincerely felt or expressed; "genuine

emotion"; "her interest in people was unfeigned"; "true

grief" [syn: {true(a)}, {unfeigned}]

3: being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of

something; "her actual motive"; "a literal solitude like a

desert"- G.K.Chesterton; "a genuine dilemma" [syn: {actual},

{literal}, {real}]

engine

1. A piece of {hardware} that encapsulates some

function but can't be used without some kind of {front end}.

Today we have, especially, "{print engine}": the guts of a

{laser printer}.

2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a

lot of noisy {crunching}, such as a "database engine", or

"{search engine}".

The hackish senses of "engine" are actually close to its

original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever

device, or instrument (the word is cognate to "ingenuity").

This sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern

connotation of power-transducing machinery in {Charles

Babbage}'s time, which explains why he named the

stored-program computer that he designed in 1844 the

"{Analytical Engine}".

[{Jargon File}]

(1996-05-31)