Perl
name
name ·1 syllable ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Proper Noun
- 1 A family of high-level programming languages, particularly used for text processing.
"Perl attracted the attention of Unix system administrators, who needed a language that was easier to use than the C programming language and more powerful than scripting languages such as Borne^([sic]) and C-shell."
Example
More examples"Tom thought Mary knew how to program in Python, JavaScript and Perl."
Etymology
A respelling of its original name Pearl, a reference to Matthew 13:46. A common backronymic explanation is “Practical Extraction and Reporting Language”.
Related phrases
More for "perl"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.