What does runtime mean in the context of the .NET CLR?

What does "Runtime" mean in the开发者_JAVA百科 context of the .NET Common Language Runtime?

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The runtime in that context is an execution platform. I.e. it defines how applications are loaded and executed. It provides a set of services common to all applications on the platform, e.g. memory management and just-in-time compilation of intermediate code.

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It's a pointless abbreviation for 'runtime system', which nowadays appears to mean an interpreter, although it didn't start out that way. When I first encountered the term, it just meant a shared runtime library, that might or might not include an interpreter.

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Here is a nice explaining picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Runtime

You write the code in different languages, it's compiled to CIL (Intermediate Language). Then CLR converts Intermediate Language into Native Code. And it happens at runtime.