0 the fixed period of time that something lasts for: --
This decision will cost us more in the short term, but will be beneficial in the long term.
a full-term pregnancy
Her last pregnancy went to term (= the baby was born after the expected number of weeks).
US Our college has three terms that we call trimesters.
In Britain, the spring term starts in January and ends just before Easter.
The government's term of office (= the period in which they have power) expires at the end of the year.
He was sentenced to a 150-year prison term for cheating thousands of ordinary people out of their savings.
1 a word or expression used in relation to a particular subject, often to describe something official or technical: --
She spoke of his achievements in glowing terms (= in a very approving way).
He complained in the strongest terms.
She told him what she thought of his behaviour in no uncertain terms (= she made her disapproval very clear).
The terms of a geometric series form a geometric progression, meaning that the ratio of successive terms in the series is constant.
We then use the same rule to compute the terms of the equation.
"Without let or hindrance" is a legal term that means "freely".
2 the conditions that control an agreement, arrangement, or activity: --
All companies will compete for the government contract on equal terms.
This competition is only open to UK residents. Terms and conditions apply.
Under the terms of their contract, employees must give three months' notice if they leave.
terms of employment
3 to give something a name or to describe it with a particular expression: --
All other symmetric and perturbative states will continue to be represented by (2.6) and (2.7) with no source term.
The first term represents a bare site and the next two terms refer to the interaction with water and with denaturant respectively.
The inclusion of the terms representing associations allows for the infection with multiple species to be non-independent.
The first author of this paper has based literally dozens of other implementations on it, unifying datatypes representing many different kinds of terms.
The term refers to a disruption of interconnecting fibres that link spatially distributed regions in the brain.
Note that the above rule may be applied provided the scope of substituted names is localised to the term to be reduced.
These could be explained in purely psychological terms.
These steps are here termed transportational cyclic steps, in order to distinguish them from the purely erosional cyclic steps considered below.
