parent process
compound.a computer program that starts another program. The new program it creates is called a child process.
compound.the primary execution unit in a computing environment that spawns one or more subprocesses. It manages the lifecycle and resources of its child processes until they terminate.
“The parent process creates a child process to handle the data.”
“When you run a command in the terminal, the shell acts as the parent process for that command.”
“If the parent process terminates unexpectedly before its children, the operating system must reassign the orphaned processes to a new supervisor.”
used almost exclusively in technical contexts like computer science and operating systems.
use the family metaphor (parent/child) to explain the hierarchy of software execution and resource inheritance.