bare metal
n.— «Other products, such as Xen and VMware’s ESX Server, run in a hypervisor that sits beneath the guest operating systems and the hardware. Because the software layer sits on the “bare metal,” these are sometimes referred to as hardware VMs. Direct contact with the system hardware allows the VMs to work more efficiently.» —“Under the Hood: The Soul of a Virtual Machine” by Robert L. Mitchell Computerworld Apr. 25, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
Floordrobe is the new word for an old habit: piling your clothes on the floor instead of putting them away. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added an entry for it, defining floordrobe as “an untidy heap of discarded clothing left on the floor...