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canonical
Last modified: Tuesday, March 23, 2004
(adj.) Authoritative or standard; conforming to an accepted rule or procedure.
When referring to programming, canonical means conforming to well-established patterns or rules. The term is typically used to describe whether or not a programming interface follows the already established standard.
When referring to IP addressing, canonical means the authoritative host name stored in a DNSdatabase that all of an IP address’ aliases resolve to. Also see CNAME.