bluescreen

See also blue screen

English

Alternative forms

• blue screen

Etymology

A compound of blue + screen, from the historical film-making technique of using blue backgrounds.

Noun

bluescreen (plural bluescreens)

1. (film) The filmmaking technique of shooting foreground action against an evenly-lit monochromatic background for the purpose of removing the background from the scene and replacing it with a difference image or scene.
2. (film) The visual effect resulting from this technique as well as the colored screen itself, especially blue.
3. (computing) An error screen displayed by some operating systems, most notably Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error which can cause the system to shut down, to prevent damage to system hardware.

Verb

bluescreen (third-person singular simple present bluescreens, present participle bluescreening, simple past and past participle bluescreened)

1. (intransitive, computing) To experience a stop error and shut down to prevent damage to system hardware.

   His computer bluescreened because of the prerelease software.

Synonyms

• (film technique): chromakey, chroma-key, chroma key, greenscreen, green screen
• (error screen): blue screen of death, BSOD

See also

• Bluescreen on Wikipedia.Wikipedia