From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
gem
n 1: a crystalline rock that can be cut and polished for jewelry;
"he had the gem set in a ring for his wife"; "she had
jewels made of all the rarest stones" [syn: gemstone,
stone]
2: art highly prized for its beauty or perfection [syn:
treasure]
3: a person who is a brilliant and precious as a piece of
jewelry [syn: jewel]
4: a sweet quick bread baked in a cup-shaped pan [syn:
muffin]
5: a precious or semiprecious stone incorporated into a piece
of jewelry [syn: jewel, precious stone]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Gem \Gem\ v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gemmed; p. pr. & vb. n.
Gemming]
1. To put forth in the form of buds. "Gemmed their blossoms."
[R.] --Milton.
[1913 Webster]
2. To adorn with gems or precious stones.
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3. To embellish or adorn, as with gems; as, a foliage gemmed
with dewdrops.
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England is . . . gemmed with castles and palaces.
--W. Irving.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Gem \Gem\, n. [OE. gemme precious stone, F. gemme, fr. L. gemma
a precious stone, bud.]
1. (Bot.) A bud.
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From the joints of thy prolific stem
A swelling knot is raised called a gem. --Denham.
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2. A precious stone of any kind, as the ruby, emerald, topaz,
sapphire, beryl, spinel, etc., especially when cut and
polished for ornament; a jewel. --Milton.
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3. Anything of small size, or expressed within brief limits,
which is regarded as a gem on account of its beauty or
value, as a small picture, a verse of poetry, a witty or
wise saying.
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Artificial gem, an imitation of a gem, made of glass
colored with metallic oxide. Cf. Paste, and Strass.
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From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
GEM
<operating system> One of the first commercially available
GUIs. Borrowing heavily from the Macintosh WIMP-style
interface it was available for both the IBM compatible
market (being packaged with Amstrad's original PC series)
and more successfully for the Atari ST range. The PC
version was produced by Digital Research (more famous for
DR-DOS, their MS-DOS clone), and was not developed very
far. The Atari version, however, continued to be developed
until the early 1990s and the later versions supported 24-bit
colour modes, full colour icons and a nice looking sculpted
3D interface.
(1997-01-10)