state

adj 1: supported and operated by the government of a state; "a

state university" [syn: {state-supported}]

2: in the service of the community or nation; "state security"

n 1: the group of people comprising the government of a sovereign

state; "the state has lowered its income tax"

2: the territory occupied by one of the constituent

administrative districts of a nation; "his state is in the

deep south" [syn: {province}]

3: a politically organized body of people under a single

government; "the state has elected a new president" [syn:

{nation}, {country}, {land}, {commonwealth}, {res publica},

{body politic}]

4: the way something is with respect to its main attributes;

"the current state of knowledge"; "his state of health";

"in a weak financial state"

5: the federal department that sets and maintains foreign

policies; "the Department of State was created in 1789"

[syn: {Department of State}, {State Department}, {State}]

6: the territory occupied by a nation; "he returned to the land

of his birth"; "he visited several European countries"

[syn: {country}, {land}, {nation}]

7: (chemistry) the three traditional states of matter are

solids (fixed shape and volume) and liquids (fixed volume

and shaped by the container) and gases (filling the

container); "the solid state of water is called ice" [syn:

{state of matter}]

8: (informal) a state of depression or agitation; "he was in

such a state you just couldn't reason with him"

v 1: express an idea, etc. in words; "He said that he wanted to

marry her"; "tell me what is bothering you"; "state your

opinion" [syn: {say}, {tell}]

2: put before; "I submit to you that the accused is guilty"

[syn: {submit}, {put forward}]

3: indicate through a symbol, formula, etc.; "Can you express

this distance in kilometers?" [syn: {express}]

state

How something is; its

configuration, attributes, condition, or information content.

The state of a system is usually temporary (i.e. it changes

with time) and volatile (i.e. it will be lost or reset to some

initial state if the system is switched off).

A state may be considered to be a point in some {space} of all

possible states. A simple example is a light, which is either

on or off. A complex example is the electrical activation in

a human brain while solving a problem.

In computing and related fields, states, as in the light

example, are often modelled as being {discrete} (rather than

continuous) and the transition from one state to another is

considered to be instantaneous. Another (related) property of

a system is the number of possible states it may exhibit.

This may be finite or infinite. A common model for a system

with a finite number of discrete state is a {finite state

machine}.

[{Jargon File}]

(1996-10-13)