From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
Phoenix
n 1: the state capital and largest city located in south central
Arizona; situated in a former desert that has become a
prosperous agricultural area thanks to irrigation [syn:
Phoenix, capital of Arizona]
2: a large monocotyledonous genus of pinnate-leaved palms found
in Asia and Africa [syn: phoenix, genus Phoenix]
3: a legendary Arabian bird said to periodically burn itself to
death and emerge from the ashes as a new phoenix; according
to most versions only one phoenix lived at a time and it
renewed itself every 500 years
4: a constellation in the southern hemisphere near Tucana and
Sculptor
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Phenix \Phe"nix\, n.; pl. Phenixes. [L. phoenix, Gr. foi^nix.]
[Written also {ph[oe]nix}.]
1. (Gr. Myth.) A bird fabled to exist single, to be consumed
by fire by its own act, and to rise again from its ashes.
Hence, an emblem of immortality.
[1913 Webster]
2. (Astron.) A southern constellation.
[1913 Webster]
3. A marvelous person or thing. [R.] --Latimer.
[1913 Webster]
4. A person or thing that suffered destruction or defeat and
was restored to its former state.
[PJC]
to rise like a phoenix, to resume an endeavor after an
apparently final defeat.
[PJC]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Phoenix \Ph[oe]"nix\ (f[=e]"n[i^]ks), n. [L., a fabulous bird.
See Phenix.]
1. Same as Phenix. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
2. (Bot.) [Capitalized] A genus of palms including the date
tree.
[1913 Webster]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008) [foldoc]:
Phoenix
<operating system> An operating system, built in BCPL on
top of IBM MVT and later MVS by Cambridge University
Computing Service from 1973 to 1995, which ran on the
university central mainframe. All parts of the system were
named after birds, including Eagle (the job scheduler, also
the nearest pub), Pigeon (the mailer), GCAL (the text
processor) and Wren (the command language), leading to Wren
Libraries (a local pun).
Phoenix was much used by chemists in daytime and by the rest
of the university in the evenings, and was only abandoned in
favour of Unix in 1995; it is one reason Cambridge
made little contribution to Unix until then.
{Computing Service Phoenix closure memo
(http://cam.ac.uk/cs/newsletter/1995/nl183/phoenix.html)}
(2003-12-05)