Pathological

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pathologic \Path`o*log"ic\, Pathological \Path`o*log"ic*al\, a.
     [Gr. ?: cf. F. pathologique.]
     1. Of or pertaining to pathology.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. (Med.) caused by or due to disease; abnormal; morbid; as,


        pathological tissue; a pathological condition.
        [Webster 1913 Suppl.] -- {Path`o*log"ic*al*ly}, adv.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  pathological
       adj 1: of or relating to the practice of pathology; "pathological
              laboratory" [syn: {pathologic}]
       2: caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition; "a
          pathological liar"; "a pathological urge to succeed"
       3: caused by or altered by or manifesting disease or pathology;
          "diseased tonsils"; "a morbid growth"; "pathologic
          tissue"; "pathological bodily processes" [syn: {diseased},
           {morbid}, {pathologic}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  19 Moby Thesaurus words for "pathological":
     bad, cankered, contaminated, diseased, gangrened, gangrenous,
     infected, morbid, mortified, peccant, poisoned, septic,
     sphacelated, tainted, ulcerated, ulcerous, unhealthy, unsound,
     unwholesome
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  pathological adj. 1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that
     is grossly atypical of normal expected input, esp. one that exposes a
     weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that
     can be broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs
     are very unlikely to occur in practice. 2. When used of test input,
     implies that it was purposefully engineered as a worst case. The
     implication in both senses is that the data is spectacularly
     ill-conditioned or that someone had to explicitly set out to break the
     algorithm in order to come up with such a crazy example. 3. Also said of
     an unlikely collection of circumstances. "If the network is down and
     comes up halfway through the execution of that command by root, the
     system may just crash." "Yes, but that's a pathological case." Often
     used to dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that the
     consequences are acceptable, since they will happen so infrequently (if
     at all) that it doesn't seem worth going to the extra trouble to handle
     that case (see sense 1).
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  pathological
       
          1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly
          atypical of normal expected input, especially one that exposes
          a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using.  An
          algorithm that can be broken by pathological inputs may still
          be useful if such inputs are very unlikely to occur in
          practice.
       
          2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully
          engineered as a worst case.  The implication in both senses is
          that the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone
          had to explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order to
          come up with such a crazy example.
       
          3. Also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances.  "If
          the network is down and comes up halfway through the execution
          of that command by root, the system may just crash."  "Yes,
          but that's a pathological case."  Often used to dismiss the
          case from discussion, with the implication that the
          consequences are acceptable, since they will happen so
          infrequently (if at all) that it doesn't seem worth going to
          the extra trouble to handle that case (see sense 1).
       
          [{Jargon File}]