startword

English

Etymology

start +‎ word

Noun

startword (plural startwords)

1. (computer science) A string of letters that identifies the beginning of a valid sequence in a specified language.
   • 1981, Mathematisch Centrum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Afdeling Informatica, Report IW - Issues 181-190:

     In fact, a set of metarules and a set of hyperrules is given whose power exceeds by far this example and only the choice of a specific hyperrule for the startword restricts it to this example.

   • 1992, Anne Morris -, The Application of Expert Systems in Libraries and Information Centres, →ISBN:

     A variation on this type of normalization consists of using a combination of startword lists and exclusion classes, e.g. remove all comparative adjectives except those in a domain list.

   • 1999, Andras Kornai, Extended Finite State Models of Language - Volume 1, →ISBN, page 222:

     Suppose that the colony starts its work from startword AA and let its terminal set be {a,b,c}

2. (literature) The first appearance of a genre in print.
   • 1875, THE CORHILL MAGAZINE , VOL XXXII, page 191:

     It was the translation of Ovid, Lucan, Seneca, and Virgil that gave English Elizabethan poetry the startword.

   • 1926, Richard Garnett, Edmund Gosse, English Literature: From the age of Johnson to the age of Tennyson:

     The attraction of the French romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D.G. Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina Rossetti, of the combination of all these with Greek and Elizabethan elements for Mr. Swinburne, were to be traced back to startwords given by the prophetic author of the Seven Lamps of Architecture.