bootstrap

n. 1. Any procedure for creating a criterion or process using some sample of the data to be measured in creating the criterion or using the process to create the process. 2. In psychology, the substitution of a statistical model of a judge's decisions, which often proves more accurate than the judge's. 3. In programming, writing a compiler for a programming language using the language itself. 4. In linguistics, the idea that children use syntactic information to help learn the meaning of words. 5. In statistics, using a sample to estimate population parameters which are then used to analyze the sample.