"GNU" meaning in English

See GNU in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

IPA: /ɡəˈn(j)uː/, /ˈd͡ʒiːˌɛnˈjuː/ Audio: En-gnu.ogg
Rhymes: -uː Etymology: Coined by Richard Stallman in 1983 as a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix”, following convention of naming programs similar to or inspired by existing programs as “(New Name) Is Not (Old Name)”; compare Xinu. Specifically influenced by lack of English words of form ?nu (“?NU is Not Unix”), that gnu is the alphabetically first (and in fact only) English word of the form ?nu (“?’s Not Unix”), that gnu was perceived as a humorous word, and the existence of the song The Gnu. Etymology templates: {{coin|en|Richard Stallman|in=1983}} Coined by Richard Stallman in 1983 Head templates: {{head|en|proper noun}} GNU
  1. The Free Software Foundation's project to develop a free UNIX-like operating system, including the legal framework, such as the source code and documentation licenses. Wikipedia link: The Gnu, Xinu Categories (topical): Unix Derived forms: GNU FDL, GNU GPL, GNU/Linux
    Sense id: en-GNU-en-name-5G6VGxyJ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 2 entries, Pages with entries
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  "etymology_text": "Coined by Richard Stallman in 1983 as a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix”, following convention of naming programs similar to or inspired by existing programs as “(New Name) Is Not (Old Name)”; compare Xinu.\nSpecifically influenced by lack of English words of form ?nu (“?NU is Not Unix”), that gnu is the alphabetically first (and in fact only) English word of the form ?nu (“?’s Not Unix”), that gnu was perceived as a humorous word, and the existence of the song The Gnu.",
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Download raw JSONL data for GNU meaning in English (1.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-22 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (9e2b7d3 and f2e72e5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.