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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Peripheral \Pe*riph"er*al\, adjective
1. Of or pertaining to a periphery; constituting a periphery; peripheric.
2. (Anat.) External; away from the center; as, the peripheral portion of the nervous system.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
peripheral
adjective
1: on or near an edge or constituting an outer boundary; the outer area; "Russia's peripheral provinces"; "peripheral suburbs" [ant: {central}]
2: related to the key issue but not of central importance; "a peripheral interest"; "energy is far from a peripheral issue in the economy"; "peripheral issues"
noun: (computer science) electronic equipment connected by cable to the CPU of a computer; "disk drives and printers are important peripherals" [syn: {computer peripheral}, {peripheral device}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
56 Moby Thesaurus words for "peripheral": ambient, apparent, beside the point, circling, circumambient, circumferential, circumflex, circumfluent, circumfluous, circumjacent, cortical, delineatory, embracing, encircling, enclosing, encompassing, enfolding, enveloping, environing, epidermic, exomorphic, exterior, external, extrinsic, fringe, in outline, incidental, inessential, irrelevant, minor, neighboring, open, out, outer, outermost, outlined, outlying, outmost, outside, outstanding, outward, outward-facing, perimetric, public, roundabout, secondary, seeming, suburban, superficial, surface, surrounding, tangential, unessential, unimportant, unnecessary, wrapping
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
peripheral (Or "peripheral device", "device") Any part of a computer other than the {CPU} or {working memory}, i.e. {disks}, {keyboards}, {monitors}, {mice}, {printers}, {scanners}, {tape drives}, {microphones}, {speakers}, {cameras}, to list just the less exotic ones. High speed working {memory}, such as {RAM}, {ROM} or, in the old days, {core} would not normally be referred to as peripherals. The more modern term "device" is also more general in that it is used for things such as a {pseudo-tty}, a {RAM drive}, or a {network adaptor}. Some argue that, since the advent of the {personal computer}, the {motherboard}, {hard disk}, keyboard, mouse, and monitor are all parts of the base system, and only use the term "peripheral" for optional additional components. (2002-09-03)
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