Noun

Singular environment

Plural environments

environment (plural environments)

1. The surroundings of, and influences on, a particular item of interest.
2. The natural world or ecosystem.
3. All the elements over which a designer has no control and that affect a system or its inputs and outputs.
4. A particular political or social setting, arena or condition.
5. (computing) The software and/or hardware existing on any particular computer system.

   That program uses the Microsoft Windows environment.

6. (programming) The environment of a function at a point during the execution of a program is the set of identifiers in the function's scope and their bindings at that point.

Environment may refer to:

• Built environment, constructed surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places.
• Environment (biophysical), the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism.
• Environment (systems), the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties
• Environmental art
• Environmental determinism
• Environmental policy
• Environmental psychology
• Environmental quality
• Environmental science, the study of the interactions among the physical, chemical and biological components of the environment
• Environments (series) A series of LPs, cassettes and CDs depicting natural sounds
• Knowledge environment
• Natural environment, all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth
• Social environment, the culture that an individual lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact

In computing:

• Desktop environment, in computing, is graphical user interface to the computer
• Environment variable, the set of environments defined in a process
• Integrated development environment, a type of computer software that assists computer programmers in developing software
• Runtime environment, a virtual machine state which provides software services for processes or programs while a computer is running

Environmentalism is a concern for the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment, such as the conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and certain land use actions.

Sourced

• Were we and the rest of the back-boned animals to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well.
  • David Attenborough; quoted in "Wolf spiders reveal their love secrets", Telegraph.co.uk, 15 November 2005. URL accessed on 2006-11-25.

• I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.
  • Agent Smith in The Matrix

• Think globally. Act neighborly.
  • Todd Murphy, friend of environmental author Bill McKibben; quoted in "Bill McKibben says we're stuffed", salon.com, 23 March 2007.