Definition of "mutex"

mutex

/ˈmjuːtɛks/

noun
plural mutexes
1. (programming) An object in a program that serves as a lock, used to negotiate mutual exclusion among threads.
  Quotations
  The ability to set a maximum waiting time provides another reason why in some circumstances, you might prefer to use a mutex rather than a lock statement.
  2004, Mark Schmidt, Simon Robinson, Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003, Sams Publishing, page 632
verb
third-person singular simple present mutexes, present participle mutexing, simple past and past participle mutexed
1. (programming, transitive) To apply a mutex to.
  Quotations
  Or you can have a single pipe that is mutexed so each thread can only write to the pipe exclusively. Alternatively, you can have each thread put the finished fd in a globally mutexed list.
  2002, Steve Connet, “Re: best way to interrupt a select() call in a (POSIX) thread?”, in comp.programming.threads (Usenet)