Hypercomputation

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A theoretical paradigm investigating computational methods surpassing established limits of traditional computation
2. Processes or systems that perform calculations exceeding the capabilities of standard computational machines
3. Concepts or methods enabling computation that goes beyond the abilities of conventional algorithms and Turing machines

Etymology: Hypercomputation is a plain compound, and its history is a matter of pairing two existing parts. The first part comes from ancient Greek "hyper", meaning "over" or "beyond", which passed into English as the prefix "hyper-" and appears in words such as hyperactive and hypersonic. The Greek preposition ultimately descends from a much older root meaning "up", reaching back through Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Hellenic before arriving in Greek as "hyper". The second part, "computation", is the familiar English noun for the act of calculating, drawn from Latin "computare", meaning "to count together". Joining the two gives a word whose literal sense is "beyond computation", which matches its meaning: machines or methods that can do more than a standard algorithm running on a Turing machine can.