core
     n 1: the center of an object; "the ball has a titanium core"
     2: a small group of indispensable persons or things; "five
        periodicals make up the core of their publishing program"
        [syn: {nucleus}, {core group}]
     3: the central part of the Earth
     4: the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some
        idea or experience; "the gist of the prosecutor's
        argument"; "the heart and soul of the Republican Party";
        "the nub of the story" [syn: {kernel}, {substance}, {center},
         {essence}, {gist}, {heart}, {heart and soul}, {inwardness},
         {marrow}, {meat}, {nub}, {pith}, {sum}, {nitty-gritty}]
     5: a cylindrical sample of soil or rock obtained with a hollow
        drill
     6: an organization founded by James Leonard Farmer in 1942 to
        work for racial equality [syn: {Congress of Racial
        Equality}]
     7: the central meaning or theme of a speech or literary work
        [syn: {effect}, {essence}, {burden}, {gist}]
     8: the chamber of a nuclear reactor containing the fissile
        material where the reaction takes place
     9: a bar of magnetic material (as soft iron) that passes
        through a coil and serves to increase the inductance of
        the coil
     v : remove the core or center from; "core an apple"
Source: WordNet® 2.0

core n. Main storage or RAM. Dates from the days of ferrite-core
   memory; now archaic as techspeak most places outside IBM, but also still
   used in the Unix community and by old-time hackers or those who would
   sound like them. Some derived idioms are quite current; `in core', for
   example, means `in memory' (as opposed to `on disk'), and both {core
   dump} and the `core image' or `core file' produced by one are terms in
   favor. Some varieties of Commonwealth hackish prefer {store}.


Source: The Jargon File