Definition: Unicode is a standard for representing text in different encoding systems, such as ASCII, UTF-8, etc. .unicode.conf is a file that contains definitions for the various encodings supported by the Unicode family. The term 'unicode' comes from the Latin for "sound" or "symbol," and it was originally used to represent sound symbols. In modern times, 'unicode' has become synonymous with encoding languages for text representation. For example, it can be found in Python's TextWrangler library, which converts text between various encodings.