"bright green precious stone," c.1300, emeraude, from Old French esmeraude (12c.), from Medieval Latin esmaraldus, from Latin smaragdus, from Greek smaragdos "green gem" (emerald or malachite), from Semitic baraq "shine" (cf. Hebrew bareqeth "emerald," Arabic barq "lightning").
Sanskrit maragdam "emerald" is from the same source, as is Persian zumurrud, whence Turkish zümrüd, source of Russian izumrud "emerald."
In early examples the word, like most other names of precious stones, is of vague meaning; the mediæval references to the stone are often based upon the descriptions given by classical writers of the smaragdus, the identity of which with our emerald is doubtful. [OED]Emerald Isle for "Ireland" is from 1795.
An object-oriented distributed programming language and environment developed at the University of Washington in the early 1980s. Emeral was the successor to EPL. It is strongly typed and uses signatures and prototypes rather than inheritance.
["Distribution and Abstract Types in Emerald", A. Black et al, IEEE Trans Soft Eng SE-13(1):65-76 (Jan 1987)].
(1994-11-09)
Heb. nophek (Ex. 28:18; 39:11); i.e., the "glowing stone", probably the carbuncle, a precious stone in the breastplate of the high priest. It is mentioned (Rev. 21:19) as one of the foundations of the New Jerusalem. The name given to this stone in the New Testament Greek is smaragdos, which means "live coal."