flavour

jargon (US: flavor) 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands

come in two flavors." "These lights come in two flavors, big

red ones and small green ones." See vanilla.

2. The attribute that causes something to be flavourful.

Usually used in the phrase "yields additional flavour". "This

convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to print

text either right-side-up or upside-down." See vanilla.

This usage was certainly reinforced by the terminology of

quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the constituents of,

e.g. protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange, charm,

top, bottom) and three colours (red, blue, green), however,

hackish use of "flavor" at MIT predated QCD.

3. The term for "class" (in the object-oriented sense) in

the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the Flavors

design has been superseded (notably by the Common LISP

CLOS facility), the term "flavor" is still used as a general

synonym for "class" by some Lisp hackers.

(1994-11-01)