Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An electronic instrument that produces an instantaneous trace on the screen of a cathode-ray tube corresponding to oscillations of voltage and current.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An electronic measuring instrument which provides a visual representation of the time variation of electrical quantities, such as voltage or current. It may be used to measure the shape of a voltage pulse or the frequency of an oscillating voltage. It can also be used to measure properties of other physical variables, such as sound or light intensity, if they can be translated into electrical voltage or current.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An electronic measuring instrument that creates a visible two-dimensional graph, on a screen, of one or more continuously varying voltages or currents.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun electronic equipment that provides visual images of varying electrical quantities

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[oscill(ation) + –scope.]

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Examples

  • The image presented on the screen of the oscilloscope is drawn in a fine system of squares, a so-called matrix, in which each individual square corresponds to a part of the examined organ.

    Physiology or Medicine 1979 - Press Release 1979

  • As Bud scanned the sky with the telescope, Tom noted that the first two figures on the oscilloscope were the same as those in the original message that he and his father had received from their space friends.

    I, TOO, DREAM.... 2010

  • The software turns your PC into an "oscilloscope" so that you can "see" the electrical activity between any two points in your circuit.

    Amazon.com Gold Box Deals 2010

  • The software turns your PC into an "oscilloscope" so that you can "see" the electrical activity between any two points in your circuit.

    Amazon.com Gold Box Deals 2010

  • The software turns your PC into an "oscilloscope" so that you can "see" the electrical activity between any two points in your circuit.

    Amazon.com Gold Box Deals 2010

  • The software turns your PC into an "oscilloscope" so that you can "see" the electrical activity between any two points in your circuit.

    Amazon.com Gold Box Deals 2010

  • The Scope Central community will cover areas such as oscilloscope fundamentals, probing, signal integrity, jitter, power, high-speed buses, mainstream buses, and memory.

    Marketwire - Breaking News Releases 2009

  • It also has another unique feature, a textual "oscilloscope", which shows (to a certain degree) what arrives at the infra LED:

    Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine 2009

  • The "quantum computer" was very poorly explained by a volunteer docent but it had an oscilloscope readout with a squiggle.

    updatey thing melted_snowball 2009

  • It reminded me of when I was taking physics and had to use an oscilloscope to figure out what was inside a box.

    The Blogging Workshop « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

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