From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
MS-DOS
n 1: an operating system developed by Bill Gates for personal
computers [syn: {MS-DOS}, {Microsoft disk operating
system}]
From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
MS-DOS
/M?S?dos/, n.
[MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A {clone} of {CP/M} for the 8088 crufted
together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products,
who called the original QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said
to have regretted it ever since. Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have
something to demo for IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous
features, including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for
subdirectories, I/O redirection, and pipelines, were hacked into
Microsoft's 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more
incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can
never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch
or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting appalling mess is now the
highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known simply as DOS, which annoys
people familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating systems (the
name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was attached to IBM's first disk
operating system for the 360). The name further annoys those who know what
the term {operating system} does (or ought to) connote; DOS is more
properly a set of relatively simple interrupt services. Some people like to
pronounce DOS like ?dose?, as in ?I don't work on dose, man!?, or to
compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide
circulation among hackers exhorts: ?MS-DOS: Just say No!?). See {mess-dos}.
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]:
MSDOS
MicroSoft Disk Operating System (MS, OS, PC)
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