The action, or a session, of reviewing source code to find and eliminate errors.
"The lead developer spent the entire afternoon debugging the application by meticulously reviewing its source code to find and eliminate hidden errors."
In plain English: A debug is an error that stops something from working correctly and needs to be fixed.
"The team spent all day debugging until they finally found and fixed the bug in the code."
To search for and eliminate malfunctioning elements or errors in something, especially a computer program or machinery.
"The software engineer spent all night debugging the code to fix the critical error before the launch."
In plain English: To debug means to find and fix mistakes so something works correctly again.
"The programmer spent all night debugging the code to fix the error before launch."
Usage: Use debug as the verb form when describing the active process of finding and fixing errors in software or hardware systems. This term is often confused with "de-bug," which incorrectly adds an unnecessary hyphen that does not appear in standard usage.
The word combines the prefix de- with bug to mean removing a fault or error from a computer program. It entered English by adapting an existing term for mechanical glitches to describe software issues instead.