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Glite Dictionary
❄️ A white fog 🗂️ A hidden file marker ✏️ To cover errors 🌫️ To lose visibility 🗂️ To hide a file
whiteout

whiteout

1 9.3
A marker in a layered computer file system that hides a file from lower layers
  • noun
  • /ˈwaɪtˌaʊt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : marcador de ocultación

Examples

  • The FireSight system allows operators to see exactly what is happening inside the boiler without screen whiteout.

    Academic text (1994)

  • These whiteout markers are phenomenal for being able to see what is in everything that you've got.

  • In the overlay filesystem, the use of whiteout clearly indicates that the previous version of the file has been deleted.

  • The software requires a whiteout to merge the changes from the different layers seamlessly.

  • To hide outdated files from view, you can use a whiteout marker in the filesystem.

Surface Forms

whiteout singular
whiteouts plural

Morphology

whiteout = white (semi-transparent) = out + white

The compound components are visible, but the computing sense ('a marker that hides a file') is a metaphorical, domain-specific extension from the idea of covering or hiding with white, so it's only partly inferable to general learners. [Postprocessing: moved 'out' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Whiteout in computing borrows the idea of covering or hiding: it is a marker that 'whites out' a file from a lower layer so it disappears from the combined view. So a computing whiteout hides a file from view.