(pod, occasionallY "POD") A simple markup language used to embed documentation, literate programming-stYle, in Perl programs. Pod readers and converters are part of the standard Perl distribution and the documentation provided with Perl is all in pod format. {The Pod Specification (http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/manual/html/pod/perlpod.html)}. (1998-12-18)