1. [n]  the words of something written; "there were more than a thousand words of text"; "they handed out the printed text of the mayor's speech"; "he wants to reconstruct the original text"
2. [n]  the main body of a written work (as distinct from illustrations or footnotes etc.); "pictures made the text easier to understand"
3. [n]  a book prepared for use in schools or colleges; "his economics textbook is in its tenth edition"; "the professor wrote the text that he assigned students to buy"
4. [n]  a passage from the Bible that is used as the subject of a sermon; "the preacher chose a text from Psalms to introduce his sermon"

1. \Text\ (t[e^]kst), n. [F. texte, L. textus, texture,
   structure, context, fr. texere, textum, to weave, construct,
   compose; cf. Gr. te`ktwn carpenter, Skr. taksh to cut, carve,
   make. Cf. {Context}, {Mantle}, n., {Pretext}, {Tissue},
   {Toil} a snare.]
   1. A discourse or composition on which a note or commentary
      is written; the original words of an author, in
      distinction from a paraphrase, annotation, or commentary.
      --Chaucer.
   2. (O. Eng. Law) The four Gospels, by way of distinction or
      eminence. [R.]
   3. A verse or passage of Scripture, especially one chosen as
      the subject of a sermon, or in proof of a doctrine.
            How oft, when Paul has served us with a text, Has
            Epictetus, Plato, Tully, preached!    --Cowper.
   4. Hence, anything chosen as the subject of an argument,
      literary composition, or the like; topic; theme.
   5. A style of writing in large characters; text-hand also, a
      kind of type used in printing; as, German text.
   {Text blindness}. (Physiol.) See {Word blindness}, under
      {Word}.
   {Text letter}, a large or capital letter. [Obs.]
   {Text pen}, a kind of metallic pen used in engrossing, or in
      writing text-hand.
   

2. \Text\, v. t.
   To write in large characters, as in text hand. [Obs.] --Beau.
   & Fl.
   

1. Executable code, especially a "pure code" portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking operating system.

Compare English.

2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary ASCII or EBCDIC representation (see flat ASCII). "Those are text files; you can review them using the editor."

These two contradictory senses confuse hackers too.

[Jargon File]