GC

   [from LISP terminology; Garbage Collect]

   1.  vt.  To  clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC
   the top of my desk today."

   2. vt. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use.

   3. n. An instantiation of the garbage collector process.

   Garbage  collection  is  computer-science  techspeak for a particular
   class  of  strategies  for dynamically but transparently reallocating
   computer  memory  (i.e.,  without  requiring  explicit allocation and
   deallocation  by  higher-level  software). One such strategy involves
   periodically  scanning all the data in memory and determining what is
   no  longer  accessible; useless data items are then discarded so that
   the  memory they occupy can be recycled and used for another purpose.
   Implementations of the LISP language usually use garbage collection.

   In  jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the {abbrev} GC is
   more  frequently  used  because  it is shorter. Note that there is an
   ambiguity  in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm going to
   garbage-collect  my desk" usually means to clean out the drawers, but
   it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk itself.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {aliasing bug}{garbage collect}{marginal}{modulo}]