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Glite Dictionary
COBOL

COBOL

2 8.1
A computer language used to write business programs that handle large amounts of data
  • noun
  • /ˈkoʊbɔl/
  • Specialized
: COBOL
  • A local bank in Spain has developed a suite of applications programmed in COBOL within legacy systems that create analytics relating to products, customer care, marketing, and risk management.
  • programs written in COBOL

Well, yes, yeah, but they're still, they're still everywhere in COBOL and Visual Basic programmes.

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Examples

  • Russia does not have this problem, as COBOL was not widely used in the 1970s or 1980s.

    Academic text (1996)

  • There is currently almost no Russian demand for COBOL.

    Academic text (1996)

  • In fact, mine was the kind of system that three or four years earlier would have been written in COBOL, the language of business systems.

    Academic text (2005)

  • However, East Carolina students must take a COBOL course, not included in the Russian program.

    Academic text (1996)

  • COBOL was an early attempt to make a programming language more like English.

    Blog text (19)

  • American civilization and perhaps worldwide civilization still runs on COBOL.

    Traceroute (2016)

  • All he knows about programming is VB6 and COBOL.

    Blog text (25)

  • I don't doubt that a bunch of back-end stuff is still COBOL stuff, though much of it has been moved from the mainframes it used to run upon.

    Blog text (32)

  • I have a friend who is a banking computer security expert, and I have heard tales of ancient IBM mainframes in chilled basements still running unintelligible COBOL programs that have been patched multiple times but couldn't be rewritten because nobody really knows what they say or how they do what they do.

    Blog text (32)

  • In the 1970s, many large companies relied on COBOL for their business applications.

Surface Forms

COBOL singular
COBOLs plural

Etymology

The word COBOL comes from the phrase Common Business-Oriented Language, and it was made to be a common 'language' for business work. That's why COBOL is used to write programs that process large amounts of data for banks and companies.