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(defs 1, 3).
Trademark. American Broadcasting Companies: a television and radio network.
atomic, biological, and chemical:
ABC warfare.
Advance Booking Charter.
Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Also, ABC. the alphabet.
the basic skills of spelling, reading, and writing:
learning the ABC’s in the early grades of school.
Also, ABC. the basic or elementary facts, principles, etc., of a subject:
the ABC’s of electricity.
Contemporary Examples

Her mother told ABC News she believes Manson loves her daughter, and that “she has been good to him.”
Mrs. Manson, Hometown Antihero Justin Glawe November 23, 2014

The furor has continued online, with a number of bloggers and advocates calling for ABC to pull the program.
Boycott the Cross-Dressing Show! ABC’s New Sitcom ‘Work It’ Doesn’t Work Noelle Howey January 2, 2012

But ABC is charting new territory with its GQ brigade, the first ripply abbed, all-male journalism revue.
ABC’s Gulf Hunks Rebecca Dana July 12, 2010

A risky move, but one that could pay off if ABC is looking to go head-to-head with Fox.
TV Upfronts 2012: NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and the CW Announce Schedules Jace Lacob, Maria Elena Fernandez May 16, 2012

Read: Bettag would definitely love to return to ABC as executive producer for his old pal Ted.
Inside Ted Koppel’s ABC Negotiations Lloyd Grove January 11, 2010

Historical Examples

She first put me into the ABC class, and advanced me through conic sections.
Among the Forces Henry White Warren

Much better just pound away at the ABC and simple arithmetic and so on.
Fantasia of the Unconscious D. H. Lawrence

The children would try to teach me my ABC’s but master would not let them.
Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives Work Projects Administration

Not that in all circles the radii are equal, but only that they are so in the circle ABC.
A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive John Stuart Mill

Thus prepared in his “ABC’s,” the would-be aviator finally makes his departure for the actual flying school.
The Romance of Aircraft Lawrence Yard Smith

noun
(pl in US) the rudiments of a subject
an alphabetical guide to a subject
(often pl in US) the alphabet
abbreviation
(formerly, of weapons or warfare) atomic, biological, and chemical
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
American Broadcasting Company
Audit Bureau of Circulation
(Austral) Australian-born Chinese: a person with Chinese parents, born and raised in Australia
(US) American-born Chinese: a person with Chinese parents, born and raised in the US
(Brit) acceptable behaviour contract: a voluntary written agreement between someone who has been involved in anti-social behaviour and a local agency such as a housing association, council, or police

“the alphabet,” late 13c., abece. Sense “rudiments or fundamentals (of a subject)” is from late 14c. From 1944 (in a “Billboard” headline) as a shortening of American Broadcasting Company. Related: ABCs.

1. Atanasoff-Berry Computer.
2. An imperative language and programming environment from CWI, Netherlands. It is interactive, structured, high-level, and easy to learn and use. It is a general-purpose language which you might use instead of BASIC, Pascal or AWK. It is not a systems-programming language but is good for teaching or prototyping.
ABC has only five data types that can easily be combined; strong typing, yet without declarations; data limited only by memory; refinements to support top-down programming; nesting by indentation. Programs are typically around a quarter the size of the equivalent Pascal or C program, and more readable.
ABC includes a programming environment with syntax-directed editing, suggestions, persistent variables and multiple workspaces and infinite precision arithmetic.
An example function words to collect the set of all words in a document:
HOW TO RETURN words document: PUT IN collection FOR line in document: FOR word IN split line: IF word not.in collection: INSERT word IN collection RETURN collection
Interpreter/compiler, version 1.04.01, by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens, Steven Pemberton . ABC has been ported to Unix, MS-DOS, Atari, Macintosh.
(http://cwi.nl/cwi/projects/abc.html).
FTP eu.net (ftp://ftp.eu.net/programming/languages/abc), FTP nluug.nl (ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/programming/languages/abc), FTP uunet (ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/abc).
Mailing list: .
E-mail: .
[“The ABC Programmer’s Handbook” by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton, published by Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-000027-2)].
[“An Alternative Simple Language and Environment for PCs” by Steven Pemberton, IEEE Software, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1987, pp. 56-64.]
(1995-02-09)
2. Argument, Basic value, C?.
An abstract machine for implementation of functional languages and its intermediate code.
[P. Koopman, “Functional Programs as Executable Specifications”, 1990].
(1995-02-09)
American Broadcasting Company
American-born Chinese
the alphabet
the basics