cartridge

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: Corruption of earlier cartage, from French cartouche, from Italian cartoccio (“roll of paper”), from Medieval Latin carta (“paper”). Doublet of cartouche.

1. The package consisting of the bullet, primer, and casing containing gunpowder; a round of ammunition.

   “Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amid the cane, and the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride.”

2. A prefabricated subassembly that can be easily installed in or removed from a larger mechanism or replaced with another interchangeable subassembly.
3. A replaceable valve assembly within a faucet or shower fixture that regulates the flow and temperature of the water.
4. A vessel which contains the ink or toner for a computer printer and can be easily replaced with another.
5. Magnetic tape storage, used for storing (backup) copies of data.

   “The program generates a catalogue of the files on the cartridge selected by the user, reads the catalogue into memory and erases the cartridge copy, so that an up-to-date copy is always generated.”

6. A removable enclosure containing read-only memory devices, used for rapid loading of software onto a home computer or video game console.

   “We would like to see someone market a low-power, text-to-speech cartridge that would mate with the Epson and use its internal battery pack.”

   “Nintendo made sure to loudly trumpet all of the advantages of the cartridge format, particularly the greatly reduced loading times and the sturdiness of the cartridges[…]”

7. A small paper package, e.g. in an old book about making printer's type: After all the type has been cast: "The Boy will paper up each sort in a cartridge by itself".