What is "nimbus"

Nimbus \Nim"bus\, n.; pl. L. Nimbi, E. Nimbuses. [L., a rain storm, a rain cloud, the cloudshaped which enveloped the gods when they appeared on earth.]

1. (Fine Arts) A circle, or disk, or any indication of radiant light around the heads of divinities, saints, and sovereigns, upon medals, pictures, etc.; a halo. See Aureola, and Glory, n., 5.

   Note: ``The nimbus is of pagan origin.'' ``As an attribute of power, the nimbus is often seen attached to the heads of evil spirits.''
   --Fairholl.

2. (Meteor.) A rain cloud; one of the four principal varieties of clouds. See Cloud.

Cloud \Cloud\ (kloud), n. [Prob. fr. AS. cl[=u]d a rock or hillock, the application arising from the frequent resemblance of clouds to rocks or hillocks in the sky or air.]

1. A collection of visible vapor, or watery particles, suspended in the upper atmosphere. I do set my bow in the cloud. --Gen. ix. 13. Note: A classification of clouds according to their chief forms was first proposed by the meteorologist Howard, and this is still substantially employed. The following varieties and subvarieties are recognized:

   1. Cirrus. This is the most elevated of all the forms of clouds; is thin, long-drawn, sometimes looking like carded wool or hair, sometimes like a brush or room, sometimes in curl-like or fleecelike patches. It is the cat's-tail of the sailor, and the mare's-tail of the landsman.

   2. Cumulus. This form appears in large masses of a hemispherical form, or nearly so, above, but flat below, one often piled above another, forming great clouds, common in the summer, and presenting the appearance of gigantic mountains crowned with snow. It often affords rain and thunder gusts.

   3. Stratus. This form appears in layers or bands extending horizontally.

   4. Nimbus. This form is characterized by its uniform gray tint and ragged edges; it covers the sky in seasons of continued rain, as in easterly storms, and is the proper rain cloud. The name is sometimes used to denote a raining cumulus, or cumulostratus.

   5. Cirro-cumulus. This form consists, like the cirrus, of thin, broken, fleecelice clouds, but the parts are more or less rounded and regulary grouped. It is popularly called mackerel sky.

   6. Cirro-stratus. In this form the patches of cirrus coalesce in long strata, between cirrus and stratus.

   7. Cumulo-stratus. A form between cumulus and stratus, often assuming at the horizon a black or bluish tint. -- Fog, cloud, motionless, or nearly so, lying near or in contact with the earth's surface. -- Storm scud, cloud lying quite low, without form, and driven rapidly with the wind.

2. A mass or volume of smoke, or flying dust, resembling vapor. ``A thick cloud of incense.''
   --Ezek. viii. 11.

3. A dark vein or spot on a lighter material, as in marble; hence, a blemish or defect; as, a cloud upon one's reputation; a cloud on a title.

4. That which has a dark, lowering, or threatening aspect; that which temporarily overshadows, obscures, or depresses; as, a cloud of sorrow; a cloud of war; a cloud upon the intellect.

5. A great crowd or multitude; a vast collection. ``So great a cloud of witnesses.''
   --Heb. xii. 1.

6. A large, loosely-knitted scarf, worn by women about the head.

   Cloud on a (or the) title (Law), a defect of title, usually superficial and capable of removal by release, decision in equity, or legislation.

   To be under a cloud, to be under suspicion or in disgrace; to be in disfavor.

   In the clouds, in the realm of facy and imagination; beyond reason; visionary.

1610s, "bright cloud surrounding a god," from Latin nimbus "cloud," perhaps related to nebula "cloud, mist" (see nebula). Meaning "halo" is first recorded c.1730. Meteorological sense of "a rain cloud" is from 1803.

n. 1 A circle of light; a halo. 2 A gray rain cloud.

1. n. a dark gray cloud bearing rain [syn: nimbus cloud, rain cloud]

2. an indication of radiant light drawn around the head of a saint [syn: aura, aureole, halo, glory, gloriole]

3. [also: nimbi (pl)]

The Nimbus was a Danish motorcycle produced from 1919 to 1960 by Fisker and Nielsen of Copenhagen, Denmark, also manufacturers of " Nilfisk" brand vacuum cleaners (now Nilfisk-Advance). Two basic models were produced, both with a 750 cc four-cylinder engine.

In cryptography, Nimbus is a block cipher invented by Alexis Machado in 2000. It was submitted to the NESSIE project, but was not selected.

The algorithm uses a 128-bit key. It operates on blocks of 64 bits and consists of 5 rounds of encryption. The round function is exceedingly simple. In each round the block is XORed with a subkey, the order of its bits is reversed, and then it is multiplied mod 2 by another subkey, which is forced to be odd.

Nimbus was broken by Vladimir Furman; he found a differential attack using only 256 chosen plaintexts.

Nimbus (foaled 1910) was a French Thoroughbred racehorse whose damsire was the 1899 British Triple Crown Champion, Flying Fox. Nimbus was owned and raced by leading French horseman Alexandre Aumont of Haras de Victot in Victot-Pontfol, Calvados.

One of several horses named Nimbus, he is designated as Nimbus "II" in accordance with his birth year. Trained by George Cunnington, Sr. at Chantilly, he was a multiple stakes winner in France.

As a sire, Nimbus notably produced Le Capucin whose wins included the 1923 Prix du Jockey Club and the 1924 Grand International d'Ostende.

Nimbus (1946–1972) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse. In a racing career which lasted from the spring of 1948 until August 1949, he ran nine times and won six races. Nimbus ran successfully as a two-year-old in 1948, winning the July Stakes, but reached his peak the following year. He won close finishes in both the 2000 Guineas and the Epsom Derby but was unable to attempt the Triple Crown after his career was ended by injury. He had modest success as a breeding stallion.

__NOTOC__ Nimbus is a toolkit that, once installed on a cluster, provides an infrastructure as a service cloud to its client via WSRF-based or Amazon EC2 WSDL web service APIs. Nimbus is free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the Apache License, version 2.

Nimbus supports both the hypervisors Xen and KVM and virtual machine schedulers Portable Batch System and Oracle Grid Engine. It allows deployment of self-configured virtual clusters via contextualization. It is configurable with respect to scheduling, networking leases, and usage accounting.

Nimbus, "A Magazine of Literature, the Arts, and New Ideas", was a literary magazine co-founded in London in 1951 by Martin Green and Tristram Hull.

Nimbus, from the Latin for "dark cloud", is an anachronistic term for the type of cloud now classified as the nimbostratus cloud. Nimbus also may refer to: