Definition: State

From New World Encyclopedia
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  1. Any sovereign polity. A government.
    • 20C, Albert Einstein, as quoted by Virgil Henshaw in Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949)
      Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
  2. A political division of a federation retaining a degree of autonomy, for example one of the fifty United States. See also Province.
  3. A condition.
    A state of being.
    A state of emergency.
  4. Pomp, ceremony, or dignity.
    The President's body will lie in state at the Capitol.
  5. (computing) The stable condition of a processor during a particular clock cycle.
    In the fetch state, the address of the next instruction is placed on the address bus.
  6. (computing) The set of all parameters relevant to a computation.
    The state here includes a set containing all names seen so far.
  7. (computing) The values of all parameters at some point in a computation.
    A debugger can show the state of a program at any breakpoint.
  8. (anthropology) A society larger than a tribe. A society large enough to form a state in the sense of a government.

Derived terms

  • buffer state
  • head of state
  • state of affairs
  • state of emergency
  • statehood

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