UNIX /yoo'niks/ n.
1.)A weak pun on MULTICS.
2.)An interactive time-sharing system originally invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered co-author of the system. The turning point in UNIX's history came when it was re-implemented almost entirely in C during 1972-1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Today DIGITAL UNIX is the only commercial 'X' O/S that can legally call itself 'UNIX', and there are more flavors of commercial 'X' than can be counted on a hand, and several public domain versions as well, such as BSD or (for the 64-bit DEC Alpha)'Red Hat' LINUX.