Winchester

[win-ches-ter, -chuh-ster] /ˈwɪnˌtʃɛs tər, -tʃə stər/
noun
1.
a city in Hampshire, in S England: cathedral; capital of the early Wessex kingdom and of medieval England.
2.
a town in E Massachusetts, near Boston.
3.
a city in N Virginia: Civil War battles 1862, 1864.
4.
a city in E central Kentucky.
5.
a town in NW Connecticut.
6.
Winchester rifle.
7.
Computers. Winchester disk.

Wessex

[wes-iks] /ˈwɛs ɪks/
noun
1.
(in the Middle Ages) a kingdom, later an earldom, in S England.
Capital: Winchester.
2.
the fictional setting of the novels of Thomas Hardy, principally identifiable with Dorsetshire.
British Dictionary definitions for Winchester

winchester

/ˈwɪntʃɪstə/
noun
1.
(sometimes capital) a large cylindrical bottle with a narrow neck used for transporting chemicals. It contains about 2.5 litres
Word Origin
after Winchester, Hampshire

Winchester

/ˈwɪntʃɪstə/
noun
1.
a city in S England, administrative centre of Hampshire: a Romano-British town; Saxon capital of Wessex; 11th-century cathedral; site of Winchester College (1382), English public school. Pop: 41 420 (2001)

Wessex1

/ˈwɛsɪks/
noun
1.
an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in S and SW England that became the most powerful English kingdom by the 10th century a.d
2.
  1. (in Thomas Hardy's works) the southwestern counties of England, esp Dorset
  2. (as modifier): Wessex Poems

Wessex2

noun
1.
Earl of Wessex, See Edward (sense 2)
Word Origin and History for Winchester

city in Hampshire, capital of Wessex and later of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Old English Uintancæstir (c.730), from Ouenta (c.150), from Venta, a pre-Celtic name perhaps meaning "favored or chief place" + Old English ceaster "Roman town" (see Chester). The meaning "kind of breech-loading repeating rifle" is from the name of Oliver F. Winchester (1810-1880), U.S. manufacturer.

Winchester in Technology
hardware
An informal generic term for floating head magnetic disk drives in which the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion.
The name arose because the original 1973 engineering prototype for what later became the IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30--30 became "Winchester" when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge).
[Jargon File]
(1994-12-06)