mainframe
Americannoun
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mainframes
plural
noun
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a high-speed general-purpose computer, usually with a large storage capacity
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( as modifier )
mainframe systems
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the central processing unit of a computer
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A large, often powerful computer, usually dedicated to lengthy, complex calculations or set up for use by many people simultaneously.
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Compare personal computer
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mainframe
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Vocabulary lists containing mainframe
Computer Science and Technology - Middle School
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Computer Science and Technology - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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The tech industry might have abandoned powerful-but-specialized mainframe computers and shifted to the cloud, but IBM’s customers—what you might call the “real” economy—still lean heavily on them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
But neither is the mainframe business and its associated software doomed, given that it remains competitive in certain markets, he argued.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
When delivering its profit warning last week, IBM pointed to recent challenges in its mainframe business.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
They include a nugget from the California gold rush; an 1879 lightbulb by Thomas Edison; a mainframe component from ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer that was built in 1946 and weighed 30 tons.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
It was a selfie of her in front of an Indian restaurant with the message, If you want to hack into the mainframe, meet me here as fast as you can.
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
IBM lowered its growth outlook after sales of data center mainframes sank 42%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
He essentially bet that corporate clients running critical programs on their own mainframes purchased from IBM couldn’t or wouldn’t migrate to remote data centers offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
However, Morningstar’s Yang explained that mainframes fall into a different class of hardware and process different workloads than hyperscaler servers do, for instance.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026
The infrastructure division, which includes IBM’s mainframes, reported revenue of $3.3 billion, which was just ahead of the $3.1 billion FactSet consensus and represented growth of 15% from the previous year.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 22, 2026
Computers up to that point had been the massive, expensive mainframes of the sort sitting in the white expanse of the Michigan Computer Center.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
