Meanings
proper noun
- humorousfunctional programmingThe Bird–Meertens formalism.
The overall goal of Squiggol is to calculate programs from their specifications in the way a mathematician calculates solutions to differential equations, or uses arithmetic to solve numerical problems.
1991 June, Erik Meijer, Maarten Fokkinga, Ross Paterson, “Functional programming with bananas, lenses, envelopes and barbed wire”, in Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Functional programming languages and computer architecture, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, pages 124–144
Origin
Blend of squiggly + ALGOL, from the “squiggly” symbols it uses.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
Squiggol. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Squiggol
MLA
“Squiggol.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Squiggol. Accessed November 4, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Squiggol,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Squiggol.
Source: Squiggol on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.