environment noun
1 the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates.
• the setting or conditions in which a particular activity is carried on : a good learning environment.
• Computing the overall structure within which a user, computer, or program operates : a desktop development environment.
2 ( the environment) the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, esp. as affected by human activity.
taken from New Oxford American Dictionary
environment (plural environments)
- The surroundings of, and influences on, a particular item of interest.
- The natural world or ecosystem.
- All the elements over which a designer has no control and that affect a system or its inputs and outputs.
- A particular political or social setting, arena or condition.
- (computing) The software and/or hardware existing on any particular computer system. That program uses the Microsoft Windows environment.
- (programming) The environment of a function at a point during the execution of a program is the set of identifiers in the function's scope and their bindings at that point.
Adapted from Wikitionary on jan 13 2010
noun
| 1 | the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu. |
| 2 | Ecology. the air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time. |
| 3 | the social and cultural forces that shape the life of a person or a population. |
| 4 | Computers. the hardware or software configuration, or the mode of operation, of a computer system: In a time-sharing environment, transactions are processed as they occur. |
| 5 | an indoor or outdoor setting that is characterized by the presence of environmental art that is itself designed to be site-specific. |
Adapted from dictionary.com
In short, the environment is the surrounding of anything living, non living, natural or man made,indoors or outdoors a surrounding that is social or not, a surrounding that is usually uncontrollable
