Noun

(en noun)

A grandiose and often lavish entrance.

* Milton

Thick with sparkling orient gems / The portal shone.

An entrance, entry point, or means of entry.

The local library, a portal of knowledge.

(Internet) A website that acts as an entrance to other websites on the Internet.

The new medical portal has dozens of topical categories containing links to hundreds of sites.

(anatomy) A short vein that carries blood into the liver.

(fiction) A magical or technological leading to another location, period in time or dimension.

(architecture) A lesser gate, where there are two of different dimensions.

(architecture) Formerly, a small square corner in a room separated from the rest of an apartment by wainscoting, forming a short passage to another apartment.

(bridge-building) The space, at one end, between opposite trusses when these are terminated by inclined braces.

A prayer book or breviary; a portass.

Noun

(en noun)

One who serves; a waitress or waiter.

A tray for dishes; a salver.

(computing) A program which provides services to other programs or users, either in the same computer or over a computer network.

(senseid)(computing) A computer dedicated to running such programs.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}