The term core is most frequently found in the phrase core dump , which derives from magnetic core memory .
core is also used to refer to the built-in components of an extensible system such as Tcl.
A core dump is the memory image that is produced if a program crashes and dumps core. A core dump can be a valuable help for debugging the crash, if you are an expert in understanding C stack traces and particularly if you configured Tcl and the extensions with -enable-symbols.
DKF: A core dump is like the corpse of a process on Unix. Sometimes, you just have to carry out an autopsy to satisfy the coroner...