flush

adj 1: of a surface exactly even with an adjoining one, forming the

same plane; "a door flush with the wall"; "the bottom

of the window is flush with the floor" [syn: {flush(p)}]

2: having an abundant supply of money or possessions of value;

"an affluent banker"; "a speculator flush with cash"; "not

merely rich but loaded"; "moneyed aristocrats"; "wealthy

corporations" [syn: {affluent}, {loaded}, {moneyed}, {wealthy}]

n 1: the period of greatest prosperity or productivity [syn: {flower},

{prime}, {peak}, {heyday}, {bloom}, {blossom}, {efflorescence}]

2: a rosy color (especially in the cheeks) taken as a sign of

good health [syn: {bloom}, {blush}, {rosiness}]

3: a response of body tissues to injury or irritation;

characterized by pain and swelling and redness and heat

[syn: {inflammation}, {redness}]

4: a poker hand with all 5 cards in the same suit

5: the release of a store of affective force; "they got a great

bang out of it"; "what a rush!"; "he does it for kicks"

[syn: {bang}, {charge}, {rush}, {thrill}, {kick}]

6: a sudden rapid flow (as of water); "he heard the flush of a

toilet"; "there was a little gush of blood"; "she attacked

him with an outpouring of words" [syn: {gush}, {outpouring}]

adv 1: squarely or solidly; "hit him flush in the face"

2: in the same plane; "set it flush with the top of the table"

v 1: turn red, as if in embarrassment [syn: {blush}, {crimson}, {redden}]

2: flow freely; "The garbage flushed down the river"

3: as of wooden floors, for example [syn: {buff}, {burnish}, {furbish}]

4: rinse, clean, or empty with a liquid; "flush the wound with

antibiotics" [syn: {scour}]

5: irrigate with water from a sluice; "sluice the earth" [syn:

{sluice}]

6: cause to flow or flood with or as if with water; "flush the

meadows"

flush

1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an

operation.

"Flush" was standard {ITS} terminology for aborting an output

operation. One spoke of the text that would have been

printed, but was not, as having been flushed. It is

speculated that this term arose from a vivid image of flushing

unwanted characters by hosing down the internal output buffer,

washing the characters away before they could be printed.

2. To force temporarily buffered data to be written to more

permanent memory. E.g. flushing buffered disk I/O to disk, as

with {C}'s {standard I/O} library "fflush(3)" call. This

sense was in use among {BLISS} programmers at {DEC} and on

{Honeywell} and {IBM} machines as far back as 1965. Another

example of this usage is flushing a {cache} on a {context

switch} where modified data stored in the cace which belongs

to one processes must be written out to main memory so that

the cache can be used by another process.

[{Jargon File}]