Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To design, arrange, set up, or shape with a view to specific applications or uses.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To form; dispose in a certain form, figure, or shape; make like in form or figure.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To arrange or dispose in a certain form, figure, or shape.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To set up or arrange something in such a way that it is ready for operation for a particular purpose, or to someone's particular liking

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb set up for a particular purpose

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English configuren, from Old French configurer, from Latin cōnfigūrāre : com-, com- + figūrāre, to form (from figūra, shape; see dheigh- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin configurare: compare French configurer. See configurate.

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Examples

  • Among the more notable, he says, is Conficker, which is thought to be a combination of the English word configure and the German word ficker, which is obscene.

    Computerworld 2009

  • There's no specific source as to where the worm got its common name, but Internet specialists speculate that Conficker is a portmanteau of the word "configure" with the German word for a common four-letter expletive.

    FIUSM.com 2009

  • That been said with the advent of OSX or BSD I am finding that special free software for music for UNIX, Linux that was a pain to configure is now been made assessable and less time consuming I assume to get up and running on the Apple computer now that steve has switched over to BSD.

    Why I Didn’t Buy A Mac | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • There are actually several settings that the user can configure, which is unexpected, but they don't seem to help the overall picture quality much.

    Original Signal - Transmitting Gadgets 2010

  • I used Webmin to set up Samba, since the configure is a pain in the butt if you do it via editing conf files. sudo apt-get install samba ssh Just be sure to secure SSH using iptables and use a strong password or keys.

    Ubuntu Forums 2010

  • "Advanced" tab with a million different things to configure, which is also confusing.

    Planet KDE 2010

  • "Advanced" tab with a million different things to configure, which is also confusing.

    Planet KDE 2010

  • Its actions are simple to configure, which is how you would expect it to be.

    RubyCorner 2009

  • The magic happens: it loads all the files inside the directory, and then starts to call the configure script, and I see yes / no lines flying in the output window.

    Sun Bloggers 2009

  • The magic happens: it loads all the files inside the directory, and then starts to call the configure script, and I see yes / no lines flying in the output window.

    Sun Bloggers 2009

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