routine: Meaning and Definition of

rou•tine

Pronunciation: (r-tēn'), [key]
— n.
  1. a customary or regular course of procedure.
  2. commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.
  3. regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.
  4. an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response: Don't give me that brotherly-love routine!
    1. a complete set of coded instructions directing a computer to perform a series of operations.
    2. a series of operations performed by the computer.
  5. an individual act, performance, or part of a performance, as a song or dance, given regularly by an entertainer: a comic routine; a dance routine.
—adj.
  1. of the nature of, proceeding by, or adhering to routine: routine duties.
  2. dull or uninteresting; commonplace.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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