stream
stream / strēm/ • n. 1. a small, narrow river.2. a continuous flow of liquid, air, or gas: Frank blew out a stream of smoke the blood gushed out in scarlet streams. ∎ a current within a larger body of water or in the ocean. ∎ (a stream/streams of) a mass of people or things moving continuously in the same direction: there is a steady stream of visitors. ∎ (a stream/streams of) a large number of things that happen or come one after the other: a woman shouted a stream of abuse. ∎ Comput. a continuous flow of data or instructions, typically one having a constant or predictable rate.3. British term for track noun sense 5.• v. 1. [intr.] (of liquid) run or flow in a continuous current in a specified direction: she sat with tears streaming down her face | fig. sunlight streamed through the windows. ∎ (of a mass of people or things) move in a continuous flow in a specified direction: he was watching the taxis streaming past.2. [intr.] (usu. be streaming) (of a person or part of the body) produce a continuous flow of liquid; run with liquid: my eyes were streaming I woke up in the night, streaming with sweat | [tr.] his mouth was streaming blood. 3. [intr.] (of hair, clothing, etc.) float or wave at full extent in the wind: her black cloak streamed behind her.4. Comput. [tr.] transmit (audio or video data) continuously, so that the parts arriving first can be viewed or listened to while the remainder is downloading.5. British term for track verb sense 4.PHRASES: against (or with) the stream against (or with) the prevailing view or tendency: a world in which the demand for quality does not run against the stream.on stream in or into operation or existence; available: more jobs are coming on stream.ORIGIN: Old English strēam (noun), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch stroom, German Strom, from an Indo-European root shared by Greek rhein ‘to flow.’
stream
1. A flow of data characterized by relatively long duration and constant rate. When the rate is known ahead of time then communication resources may be reserved for the stream. For example, stream traffic may be carried using low-overhead synchronous time division multiplexing (TDM), while other traffic on the same channel is carried by higher-overhead asynchronous TDM. This is particularly important in satellite transmission systems, where overhead differences between synchronous and asynchronous traffic are very great. It is also important in applications, such as packet speech, that require a low variation in network delay.
2. A finite or infinite sequence of elements of a nonempty set A indexed by time. If T is a set of time instants, or clock cycles, then the stream can be represented by a function a : T → A,
where a(t) is the element in the stream at time t in T. Usually, in modeling computing systems, the elements of A are data or instructions, and time is assumed to be discrete, in which case T = {0,1,2, …}.
stream
a stream cannot rise above its source proverbial saying, mid 17th century; used to suggest that a person's natural level is set by their ultimate origin.
stream of consciousness a person's thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous flow; a literary style in which a character's thoughts, feelings, and reactions are depicted in a continuous flow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue. The term was introduced by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890).
See also don't change horses in mid-stream.
stream
Hence stream vb. XIII; whence streamer (-ER1) flag floating in the air XIII.