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#========= THIS IS THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.11, 01 JAN 1993 =========#
This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely used,
shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you
can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many
hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper
citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will
change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon
File 2.9.11" or "The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 2.9.11, 01 JUL 1992".)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a
number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the
File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. Editorial
responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others;
to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to
keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated
versions periodically. Current volunteer editors include:
Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.com (215)-296-5718
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good form to
check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work or commercial
product. We may have additional information that would be helpful to you and
can assist you in framing your quote to reflect not only the letter of the File
but its spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor
are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as
freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited, and
formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the volunteer
editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to have a bound paper
copy of this file, you may find it convenient to purchase one of these. They
often contain additional material not found in on-line versions. The two
`authorized' editions so far are described in the Revision History section;
there may be more in the future.
:Introduction:
:About This File:
=================
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of
computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background
and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the
language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and
technical debate.
The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures
that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared
roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics,
in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly
creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values
and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an
intentional culture less than 35 years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture
together --- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the community
and expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual, *not* knowing the
slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or
(worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a {suit}. All human
cultures use slang in this threefold way --- as a tool of communication, and of
inclusion, and of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in the
slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect in
most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states
of *consciousness*. There is a whole range of altered states and
problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into
conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of
Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite of
hackers), and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As
a simple example, take the distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant}
solution, and the differing connotations attached to each. The distinction is
not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the nature of
the generative processes in program design and asserts something important
about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker and the hack.
Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones and
undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious
and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in
young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an
educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus,
linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and
largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and
use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus
display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of
language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence.
Further, the electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot'
connections, well adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the
ruthless culling of weak and superannuated specimens. The results of this
process give us perhaps a uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic
evolution in action.
Hackish slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological
assumptions. For example, it has recently become fashionable to speak of
`low-context' versus `high-context' communication, and to classify cultures by
the preferred context level of their languages and art forms. It is usually
claimed that low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity,
and completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which
value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast,
high-context communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal,
heavily coded) is associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus,
cooperation, and tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is
themed around extremely low-context interaction with computers and exhibits
primarily "low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context
slang style?
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation of
hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture ---
and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation called
the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers themselves for over 15 years. This
one (like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes `topic
entries' which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture
that would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the
material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at least
a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking.
But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong,
sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of these entries
reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely
passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up
these disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that *everyone's* sacred
cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue,
but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it either
necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, and
one of this document's major intended audiences --- fledgling hackers already
partway inside the culture --- will benefit from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in
{appendix A}. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to
{appendix B}, "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker". {Appendix C} is a bibliography
of non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker
culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must choose by
action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between description
and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier versions of the
Jargon File have played a central role in spreading hacker language and the
culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, and we hope and
expect that this one will do likewise.
:Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak:
=================================
Linguists usually refer to informal language as `slang' and reserve the term
`jargon' for the technical vocabularies of various occupations. However, the
ancestor of this collection was called the `Jargon File', and hackish slang is
traditionally `the jargon'. When talking about the jargon there is therefore
no convenient way to distinguish what a *linguist* would call hackers' jargon
--- the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and
manuals.
To make a confused situation worse, the line between hackish slang and the
vocabulary of technical programming and computer science is fuzzy, and shifts
over time. Further, this vocabulary is shared with a wider technical culture
of programmers, many of whom are not hackers and do not speak or recognize
hackish slang.
Accordingly, this lexicon will try to be as precise as the facts of usage
permit about the distinctions among three categories:
* `slang': informal language from mainstream English or non-technical
subcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc).
* `jargon': without qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' language
peculiar to hackers --- the subject of this lexicon.
* `techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computer
science, electronics, and other fields connected to hacking.
This terminology will be consistently used throughout the remainder of this
lexicon.
The jargon/techspeak distinction is the delicate one. A lot of techspeak
originated as jargon, and there is a steady continuing uptake of jargon into
techspeak. On the other hand, a lot of jargon arises from overgeneralization
of techspeak terms (there is more about this in the "Jargon Construction"
section below).
In general, we have considered techspeak any term that communicates primarily
by a denotation well established in textbooks, technical dictionaries, or
standards documents.
A few obviously techspeak terms (names of operating systems, languages, or
documents) are listed when they are tied to hacker folklore that isn't covered
in formal sources, or sometimes to convey critical historical background
necessary to understand other entries to which they are cross-referenced. Some
other techspeak senses of jargon words are listed in order to make the jargon
senses clear; where the text does not specify that a straight technical sense
is under discussion, these are marked with `[techspeak]' as an etymology. Some
entries have a primary sense marked this way, with subsequent jargon meanings
explained in terms of it.
We have also tried to indicate (where known) the apparent origins of terms.
The results are probably the least reliable information in the lexicon, for
several reasons. For one thing, it is well known that many hackish usages have
been independently reinvented multiple times, even among the more obscure and
intricate neologisms. It often seems that the generative processes underlying
hackish jargon formation have an internal logic so powerful as to create
substantial parallelism across separate cultures and even in different
languages! For another, the networks tend to propagate innovations so quickly
that `first use' is often impossible to pin down. And, finally, compendia like
this one alter what they observe by implicitly stamping cultural approval on
terms and widening their use.
Despite these problems, the organized collection of jargon-related oral history
for the File's 2.x.x versions has enabled us to put to rest quite a number of
folk etymologies, place credit where credit is due, and illuminate the early
history of many important hackerisms such as {kluge}, {cruft}, and {foo}. We
believe specialist lexicographers will find many of the historical notes more
than casually instructive.
:Revision History:
==================
The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker jargon from technical
cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI lab (SAIL), and others of
the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt, Beranek and Newman
(BBN), Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute
(WPI).
The Jargon File (hereafter referred to as `jargon-1' or `the File') was begun
by Raphael Finkel at Stanford in 1975. From this time until the plug was
finally pulled on the SAIL computer in 1991, the File was named
AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] there. Some terms in it date back considerably earlier
({frob} and some senses of {moby}, for instance, go back to the Tech Model
Railroad Club at MIT and are believed to date at least back to the early
1960s). The revisions of jargon-1 were all unnumbered and may be collectively
considered `Version 1'.
In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the SAIL
computer, {FTP}ed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that it was hardly
restricted to `AI words' and so stored the file on his directory as AI:MRC;SAIL
JARGON.
The file was quickly renamed JARGON > (the `>' caused versioning under ITS) as
a flurry of enhancements were made by Mark Crispin and Guy L. Steele Jr.
Unfortunately, amidst all this activity, nobody thought of correcting the term
`jargon' to `slang' until the compendium had already become widely known as the
Jargon File.
Raphael Finkel dropped out of active participation shortly thereafter and Don
Woods became the SAIL contact for the File (which was subsequently kept in
duplicate at SAIL and MIT, with periodic resynchronizations).
The File expanded by fits and starts until about 1983; Richard Stallman was
prominent among the contributors, adding many MIT and ITS-related coinages.
In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the File
published in Stewart Brand's `CoEvolution Quarterly' (issue 29, pages 26--35)
with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the
Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the File's first paper
publication.
A late version of jargon-1, expanded with commentary for the mass market, was
edited by Guy Steele into a book published in 1983 as `The Hacker's Dictionary'
(Harper & Row CN 1082, ISBN 0-06-091082-8). The other jargon-1 editors
(Raphael Finkel, Don Woods, and Mark Crispin) contributed to this revision, as
did Richard M. Stallman and Geoff Goodfellow. This book (now out of print) is
hereafter referred to as `Steele-1983' and those six as the Steele-1983
coauthors.
Shortly after the publication of Steele-1983, the File effectively stopped
growing and changing. Originally, this was due to a desire to freeze the file
temporarily to facilitate the production of Steele-1983, but external
conditions caused the `temporary' freeze to become permanent.
The AI Lab culture had been hit hard in the late 1970s by funding cuts and the
resulting administrative decision to use vendor-supported hardware and software
instead of homebrew whenever possible. At MIT, most AI work had turned to
dedicated LISP Machines. At the same time, the commercialization of AI
technology lured some of the AI Lab's best and brightest away to startups along
the Route 128 strip in Massachusetts and out West in Silicon Valley. The
startups built LISP machines for MIT; the central MIT-AI computer became a
{TWENEX} system rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved {ITS}.
The Stanford AI Lab had effectively ceased to exist by 1980, although the SAIL
computer continued as a Computer Science Department resource until 1991.
Stanford became a major {TWENEX} site, at one point operating more than a dozen
TOPS-20 systems; but by the mid-1980s most of the interesting software work was
being done on the emerging BSD UNIX standard.
In April 1983, the PDP-10-centered cultures that had nourished the File were
dealt a death-blow by the cancellation of the Jupiter project at Digital
Equipment Corporation. The File's compilers, already dispersed, moved on to
other things. Steele-1983 was partly a monument to what its authors thought
was a dying tradition; no one involved realized at the time just how wide its
influence was to be.
By the mid-1980s the File's content was dated, but the legend that had grown up
around it never quite died out. The book, and softcopies obtained off the
ARPANET, circulated even in cultures far removed from MIT and Stanford; the
content exerted a strong and continuing influence on hackish language and
humor. Even as the advent of the microcomputer and other trends fueled a
tremendous expansion of hackerdom, the File (and related materials such as the
AI Koans in Appendix A) came to be seen as a sort of sacred epic, a
hacker-culture Matter of Britain chronicling the heroic exploits of the Knights
of the Lab. The pace of change in hackerdom at large accelerated tremendously
--- but the Jargon File, having passed from living document to icon, remained
essentially untouched for seven years.
This revision contains nearly the entire text of a late version of jargon-1 (a
few obsolete PDP-10-related entries were dropped after careful consultation
with the editors of Steele-1983). It merges in about 80% of the Steele-1983
text, omitting some framing material and a very few entries introduced in
Steele-1983 that are now also obsolete.
This new version casts a wider net than the old Jargon File; its aim is to
cover not just AI or PDP-10 hacker culture but all the technical computing
cultures wherein the true hacker-nature is manifested. More than half of the
entries now derive from {USENET} and represent jargon now current in the C and
UNIX communities, but special efforts have been made to collect jargon from
other cultures including IBM PC programmers, Amiga fans, Mac enthusiasts, and
even the IBM mainframe world.
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> maintains the new File with assistance
from Guy L. Steele Jr. <gls@think.com>; these are the persons primarily
reflected in the File's editorial `we', though we take pleasure in
acknowledging the special contribution of the other coauthors of Steele-1983.
Please email all additions, corrections, and correspondence relating to the
Jargon File to jargon@thyrsus.com (UUCP-only sites without connections to an
autorouting smart site can use ...!uunet!snark!jargon).
(Warning: other email addresses appear in this file *but are not guaranteed to
be correct* later than the revision date on the first line. *Don't* email us
if an attempt to reach your idol bounces --- we have no magic way of checking
addresses or looking up people.)
The 2.9.6 version became the main text of `The New Hacker's Dictionary', by
Eric Raymond (ed.), MIT Press 1991, ISBN 0-262-68069-6. The maintainers are
committed to updating the on-line version of the Jargon File through and beyond
paper publication, and will continue to make it available to archives and
public-access sites as a trust of the hacker community.
Here is a chronology of the high points in the recent on-line revisions:
Version 2.1.1, Jun 12 1990: the Jargon File comes alive again after a
seven-year hiatus. Reorganization and massive additions were by Eric S.
Raymond, approved by Guy Steele. Many items of UNIX, C, USENET, and
microcomputer-based jargon were added at that time (as well as The Untimely
Demise of Mabel The Monkey).
Version 2.9.6, Aug 16 1991: corresponds to reproduction copy for book. This
version had 18952 lines, 148629 words, 975551 characters, and 1702 entries.
Version 2.9.8, Jan 01 1992: first public release since the book, including over
fifty new entries and numerous corrections/additions to old ones. Packaged
with version 1.1 of vh(1) hypertext reader. This version had 19509 lines,
153108 words, 1006023 characters, and 1760 entries.
Version 2.9.9, Apr 01 1992: folded in XEROX PARC lexicon. This version had
20298 lines, 159651 words, 1048909 characters, and 1821 entries.
Version 2.9.10, Jul 01 1992: lots of new historical material. This version had
21349 lines, 168330 words, 1106991 characters, and 1891 entries.
Version 2.9.11, Jan 01 1993: lots of new historical material. This version had
21725 lines, 171169 words, 1125880 characters, and 1922 entries.
Version numbering: Version numbers should be read as major.minor.revision.
Major version 1 is reserved for the `old' (ITS) Jargon File, jargon-1. Major
version 2 encompasses revisions by ESR (Eric S. Raymond) with assistance from
GLS (Guy L. Steele, Jr.). Someday, the next maintainer will take over and
spawn `version 3'. Usually later versions will either completely supersede or
incorporate earlier versions, so there is generally no point in keeping old
versions around.
Our thanks to the coauthors of Steele-1983 for oversight and assistance, and to
the hundreds of USENETters (too many to name here) who contributed entries and
encouragement. More thanks go to several of the old-timers on the USENET group
alt.folklore.computers, who contributed much useful commentary and many
corrections and valuable historical perspective: Joseph M. Newcomer
<jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Bernie Cosell <cosell@bbn.com>, Earl Boebert
<boebert@SCTC.com>, and Joe Morris <jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org>.
We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished linguists. David
Stampe <stampe@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu> and Charles Hoequist <hoequist@bnr.ca>
contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane <jgk@osc.osc.com> helped us improve
the pronunciation guides.
A few bits of this text quote previous works. We are indebted to Brian A.
LaMacchia <bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu> for obtaining permission for us to use
material from the `TMRC Dictionary'; also, Don Libes <libes@cme.nist.gov>
contributed some appropriate material from his excellent book `Life With UNIX'.
We thank Per Lindberg <per@front.se>, author of the remarkable Swedish-language
'zine `Hackerbladet', for bringing `FOO!' comics to our attention and smuggling
one of the IBM hacker underground's own baby jargon files out to us. Thanks
also to Maarten Litmaath for generously allowing the inclusion of the ASCII
pronunciation guide he formerly maintained. And our gratitude to Marc Weiser
of XEROX PARC <Marc_Weiser.PARC@xerox.com> for securing us permission to quote
from PARC's own jargon lexicon and shipping us a copy.
It is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the major contributions of Mark
Brader <msb@sq.com> to the final manuscript; he read and reread many drafts,
checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful
comments, and did yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage bobbles.
Mr. Brader's rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence, wide-ranging
technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of language made his help
invaluable, and the sustained volume and quality of his input over many months
only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the slimmest of margins.
Finally, George V. Reilly <gvr@cs.brown.edu> helped with TeX arcana and
painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions; Steve Summit
<scs@adam.mit.edu> contributed a number of excellent new entries and many small
improvements to 2.9.10; and Eric Tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage
advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.
:How Jargon Works:
:Jargon Construction:
=====================
There are some standard methods of jargonification that became established
quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such sources as the Tech Model
Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John McCarthy's original crew of
LISPers. These include the following:
:Verb Doubling: --------------- A standard construction in English is to double
a verb and use it as an exclamation, such as "Bang, bang!" or "Quack, quack!".
Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double verbs as a concise,
sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject does. Also, a doubled
verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the process remarking on the
current state of affairs or what the speaker intends to do next. Typical
examples involve {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {chomp}:
"The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose."
"Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame."
"Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!"
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately obvious
from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.
The USENET culture has one *tripling* convention unrelated to this; the names
of `joke' topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first and
paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a "Muppet Show"
reference); other classics include alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg,
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk,
sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom, and
alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill.
:Soundalike slang: ------------------ Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in
order to convert an ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting.
It is considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to
include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine `Dr. Dobb's
Journal' is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr. Frob's Journal' or
simply `Dr. Frob's'. Terms of this kind that have been in fairly wide use
include names for newspapers:
Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried)
Boston Globe => Boston Glob
Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle => the Crocknicle (or the Comical)
New York Times => New York Slime
However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard
examples include:
Data General => Dirty Genitals
IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys)
=> Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate
for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) => Marginal Hacks Hall
This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been compared to
in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas hacker punning
jargon is intentionally transparent.
:The `-P' convention: --------------------- Turning a word into a question by
appending the syllable `P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter
`P' to denote a predicate (a boolean-valued function). The question should
expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See {T} and {NIL}.)
At dinnertime:
Q: "Foodp?"
A: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!"
At any time:
Q: "State-of-the-world-P?"
A: (Straight) "I'm about to go home."
A: (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state."
On the phone to Florida:
Q: "State-p Florida?"
A: "Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?"
[One of the best of these is a {Gosperism}. Once, when we were at a Chinese
restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would like to share with
him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" --- GLS]
:Overgeneralization: -------------------- A very conspicuous feature of jargon
is the frequency with which techspeak items such as names of program tools,
command language primitives, and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts
outside of computing wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to
cite one of the best-known examples) UNIX hackers often {grep} for things
rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many
hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make
nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or
vice versa). For example, because
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
hackers happily generalize:
mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrosity
obvious => obviosity
dubious => dubiosity
Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: "All nouns can be verbed",
"I'll mouse it up", "Hang on while I clipboard it over", "I'm grepping the
files". English as a whole is already heading in this direction (towards
pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the
curve.
However, note that hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker would
never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or `securitize' things.
Hackers have a strong aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who
use it with contempt.
Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight overgeneralization
in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form to mark them in some
standard nonstandard way. Thus:
win => winnitude, winnage
disgust => disgustitude
hack => hackification
Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms.
Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary noted that the defined
plural of `caboose' is `cabeese', and includes an entry which implies that the
plural of `mouse' is {meeces}. On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost
anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in
the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated
this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
`frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and `Unices' and
`Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {UNIX}, {TWENEX} in main
text). But note that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never used; it has been
suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that
attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to general approval
that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.
The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization
of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or a fossil (such
as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to
cases where it isn't normally considered to apply.
This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of what
they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a
form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the
expense of clarity.
:Spoken inarticulations: ------------------------ Words such as `mumble',
`sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where their referent might more
naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the
impossibility of representing such noises on a comm link or in electronic mail
(interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing up with
increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is
"Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!"
:Anthromorphization: -------------------- Semantically, one rich source of
jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and
software. This isn't done in a na"ive way; hackers don't personalize their
stuff in the sense of feeling empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe
that the things they work on every day are `alive'. What *is* common is to
hear hardware or software talked about as though it has homunculi talking to
each other inside it, with intentions and desires. Thus, one hears "The
protocol handler got confused", or that programs "are trying" to do things, or
one may say of a routine that "its goal in life is to X". One even hears
explanations like "... and its poor little brain couldn't understand X, and it
died." Sometimes modelling things this way actually seems to make them easier
to understand, perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything
with a really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than
`like a thing'.
Of the six listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun formations,
anthromorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite
general; but punning jargon is still largely confined to MIT and other large
universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers flourish.
Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members
of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns
used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an
approximately correct spectrum:
monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature
crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection
The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never actually
attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the reliability of
software:
broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle
solid robust bulletproof armor-plated
Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth hackish (it is rare in
the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers.
Coinages for describing {lossage} seem to call forth the very finest in hackish
linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have even more
words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people.
:Hacker Writing Style:
======================
We've already seen that hackers often coin jargon by overgeneralizing
grammatical rules. This is one aspect of a more general fondness for
form-versus-content language jokes that shows up particularly in hackish
writing. One correspondent reports that he consistently misspells `wrong' as
`worng'. Others have been known to criticize glitches in Jargon File drafts by
observing (in the mode of Douglas Hofstadter) "This sentence no verb", or "Bad
speling", or "Incorrectspa cing." Similarly, intentional spoonerisms are often
made of phrases relating to confusion or things that are confusing; `dain
bramage' for `brain damage' is perhaps the most common (similarly, a hacker
would be likely to write "Excuse me, I'm cixelsyd today", rather than "I'm
dyslexic today"). This sort of thing is quite common and is enjoyed by all
concerned.
Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the
dismay of American editors. Thus, if "Jim is going" is a phrase, and so are
"Bill runs" and "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is
going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect according to
standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final
period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers
to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given
the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming,
American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating
command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in
the neck.
Consider, for example, a sentence in a {vi} tutorial that looks like this:
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd".
Standard usage would make this
Then delete a line from the file by typing "dd."
but that would be very bad --- because the reader would be prone to type the
string d-d-dot, and it happens that in `vi(1)' dot repeats the last command
accepted. The net result would be to delete *two* lines!
The Jargon File follows hackish usage throughout.
Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great Britain,
though the older style (which became established for typographical reasons
having to do with the aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still
accepted there. `Hart's Rules' and the `Oxford Dictionary for Writers and
Editors' call the hacker-like style `new' or `logical' quoting.
Another hacker quirk is a tendency to distinguish between `scare' quotes and
`speech' quotes; that is, to use British-style single quotes for marking and
reserve American-style double quotes for actual reports of speech or text
included from elsewhere. Interestingly, some authorities describe this as
correct general usage, but mainstream American English has gone to using
double-quotes indiscriminately enough that hacker usage appears marked [and, in
fact, I thought this was a personal quirk of mine until I checked with USENET
--- ESR]. One further permutation that is definitely *not* standard is a
hackish tendency to do marking quotes by using apostrophes (single quotes) in
pairs; that is, 'like this'. This is modelled on string and character literal
syntax in some programming languages (reinforced by the fact that many
character-only terminals display the apostrophe in typewriter style, as a
vertical single quote).
One quirk that shows up frequently in the {email} style of UNIX hackers in
particular is a tendency for some things that are normally all-lowercase
(including usernames and the names of commands and C routines) to remain
uncapitalized even when they occur at the beginning of sentences. It is clear
that, for many hackers, the case of such identifiers becomes a part of their
internal representation (the `spelling') and cannot be overridden without
mental effort (an appropriate reflex because UNIX and C both distinguish cases
and confusing them can lead to {lossage}). A way of escaping this dilemma is
simply to avoid using these constructions at the beginning of sentences.
There seems to be a meta-rule behind these nonstandard hackerisms to the effect
that precision of expression is more important than conformance to traditional
rules; where the latter create ambiguity or lose information they can be
discarded without a second thought. It is notable in this respect that other
hackish inventions (for example, in vocabulary) also tend to carry very precise
shades of meaning even when constructed to appear slangy and loose. In fact,
to a hacker, the contrast between `loose' form and `tight' content in jargon is
a substantial part of its humor!
Hackers have also developed a number of punctuation and emphasis conventions
adapted to single-font all-ASCII communications links, and these are
occasionally carried over into written documents even when normal means of font
changes, underlining, and the like are available.
One of these is that TEXT IN ALL CAPS IS INTERPRETED AS `LOUD', and this
becomes such an ingrained synesthetic reflex that a person who goes to
caps-lock while in {talk mode} may be asked to "stop shouting, please, you're
hurting my ears!".
Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual characters to signify
emphasis. The asterisk is most common, as in "What the *hell*?" even though
this interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix as a footnote mark.
The underscore is also common, suggesting underlining (this is particularly
common with book titles; for example, "It is often alleged that Joe Haldeman
wrote _The_Forever_War_ as a rebuttal to Robert Heinlein's earlier novel of the
future military, _Starship_Troopers_."). Other forms exemplified by "=hell=",
"\hell/", or "/hell/" are occasionally seen (it's claimed that in the last
example the first slash pushes the letters over to the right to make them
italic, and the second keeps them from falling over). Finally, words may also
be emphasized L I K E T H I S, or by a series of carets (^) under them on the
next line of the text.
There is a semantic difference between *emphasis like this* (which emphasizes
the phrase as a whole), and *emphasis* *like* *this* (which suggests the writer
speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if to a very young child or a mentally
impaired person). Bracketing a word with the `*' character may also indicate
that the writer wishes readers to consider that an action is taking place or
that a sound is being made. Examples: *bang*, *hic*, *ring*, *grin*, *kick*,
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he's in from corporate HQ.
would be read as "Be nice to this fool, I mean this gentleman...". This comes
from the fact that the digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for a
backspace. It parallels (and may have been influenced by) the ironic use of
`slashouts' in science-fiction fanzines.
In a formula, `*' signifies multiplication but two asterisks in a row are a
shorthand for exponentiation (this derives from FORTRAN). Thus, one might
write 2 ** 8 = 256.
Another notation for exponentiation one sees more frequently uses the caret (^,
ASCII 1011110); one might write instead `2^8 = 256'. This goes all the way
back to Algol-60, which used the archaic ASCII `up-arrow' that later became the
caret; this was picked up by Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC, which in turn
influenced the design of the `bc(1)' and `dc(1)' UNIX tools, which have
probably done most to reinforce the convention on USENET. The notation is
mildly confusing to C programmers, because `^' means bitwise {XOR} in C.
Despite this, it was favored 3:1 over ** in a late-1990 snapshot of USENET. It
is used consistently in this text.
In on-line exchanges, hackers tend to use decimal forms or improper fractions
(`3.5' or `7/2') rather than `typewriter style' mixed fractions (`3-1/2'). The
major motive here is probably that the former are more readable in a monospaced
font, together with a desire to avoid the risk that the latter might be read as
`three minus one-half'. The decimal form is definitely preferred for fractions
with a terminating decimal representation; there may be some cultural influence
here from the high status of scientific notation.
Another on-line convention, used especially for very large or very small
numbers, is taken from C (which derived it from FORTRAN). This is a form of
`scientific notation' using `e' to replace `*10^'; for example, one year is
about 3e7 seconds long.
The tilde (~) is commonly used in a quantifying sense of `approximately'; that
is, `~50' means `about fifty'.
On USENET and in the {MUD} world, common C boolean, logical, and relational
operators such as `|', `&', `||', `&&', `!', `==', `!=', `>', and `<', `>=',
and `=<' are often combined with English. The Pascal not-equals, `<>', is also
recognized, and occasionally one sees `/=' for not-equals (from Ada, Common
Lisp, and Fortran 90). The use of prefix `!' as a loose synonym for `not-' or
`no-' is particularly common; thus, `!clue' is read `no-clue' or `clueless'.
A related practice borrows syntax from preferred programming languages to
express ideas in a natural-language text. For example, one might see the
following:
I resently had occasion to field-test the Snafu
Systems 2300E adaptive gonkulator. The price was
right, and the racing stripe on the case looked kind
of neat, but its performance left something to be desired.
#ifdef FLAME
Hasn't anyone told those idiots that you can't get
decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today's
net speeds?
#endif /* FLAME */
I guess they figured the price premium for true
frame-based semantic analysis was too high.
Unfortunately, it's also the only workable approach.
I wouldn't recommend purchase of this product unless
you're on a *very* tight budget.
#include <disclaimer.h>
--
== Frank Foonly (Fubarco Systems)
In the above, the `#ifdef'/`#endif' pair is a conditional compilation syntax
from C; here, it implies that the text between (which is a {flame}) should be
evaluated only if you have turned on (or defined on) the switch FLAME. The
`#include' at the end is C for "include standard disclaimer here"; the
`standard disclaimer' is understood to read, roughly, "These are my personal
opinions and not to be construed as the official position of my employer."
Another habit is that of using angle-bracket enclosure to genericize a term;
this derives from conventions used in {BNF}. Uses like the following are
common:
So this <ethnic> walks into a bar one day, and...
Hackers also mix letters and numbers more freely than in mainstream usage. In
particular, it is good hackish style to write a digit sequence where you intend
the reader to understand the text string that names that number in English.
So, hackers prefer to write `1970s' rather than `nineteen-seventies' or
`1970's' (the latter looks like a possessive).
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use
multiply nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is almost
certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses
(like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a
more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems
to their limits is in operation.
One area where hackish conventions for on-line writing are still in some flux
is the marking of included material from earlier messages --- what would be
called `block quotations' in ordinary English. From the usual typographic
convention employed for these (smaller font at an extra indent), there derived
the notation of included text being indented by one ASCII TAB (0001001)
character, which under UNIX and many other environments gives the appearance of
an 8-space indent.
Early mail and netnews readers had no facility for including messages this way,
so people had to paste in copy manually. BSD `Mail(1)' was the first message
agent to support inclusion, and early USENETters emulated its style. But the
TAB character tended to push included text too far to the right (especially in
multiply nested inclusions), leading to ugly wraparounds. After a brief period
of confusion (during which an inclusion leader consisting of three or four
spaces became established in EMACS and a few mailers), the use of leading `>'
or `> ' became standard, perhaps owing to its use in `ed(1)' to display tabs
(alternatively, it may derive from the `>' that some early UNIX mailers used to
quote lines starting with "From" in text, so they wouldn't look like the
beginnings of new message headers). Inclusions within inclusions keep their
`>' leaders, so the `nesting level' of a quotation is visually apparent.
A few other idiosyncratic quoting styles survive because they are automatically
generated. One particularly ugly one looks like this:
/* Written hh:mm pm Mmm dd, yyyy by user@site in <group> */
/* ---------- "Article subject, chopped to 35 ch" ---------- */
<quoted text>
/* End of text from local:group */
It is generated by an elderly, variant news-reading system called `notesfiles'.
The overall trend, however, is definitely away from such verbosity.
The practice of including text from the parent article when posting a followup
helped solve what had been a major nuisance on USENET: the fact that articles
do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters used to
post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's
wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to
what. Consequently, around 1984, new news-posting software evolved a facility
to automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with "> " or
whatever the poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the
relevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters post articles
containing the *entire* text of a preceding article, *followed* only by "No,
that's wrong" or "I agree".
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there
soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included
text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles containing too
high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' --- but this too has led to
undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content
filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection
threshold.
Because the default mailers supplied with UNIX and other operating systems
haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a
leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is
now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail.
In 1991 practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion
style occasionally lead to {holy wars}. One variant style reported uses the
citation character `|' in place of `>' for extended quotations where original
variations in indentation are being retained. One also sees different styles
of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it
loses information) uses a leader of `> ' for everyone, another (the most
common) is `> > > > ', `> > > ', etc. (or `>>>> ', `>>> ', etc., depending on
line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and
yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say `> ', `:
', `| ', `} ' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is
still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet *another*
style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for
that poster. Occasionally one sees a `# ' leader used for quotations from
authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to
the root prompt (the special UNIX command prompt issued when one is running as
the privileged super-user).
Finally, it is worth mentioning that many studies of on-line communication have
shown that electronic links have a de-inhibiting effect on people. Deprived of
the body-language cues through which emotional state is expressed, people tend
to forget everything about other parties except what is presented over that
ASCII link. This has both good and bad effects. The good one is that it
encourages honesty and tends to break down hierarchical authority
relationships; the bad is that it may encourage depersonalization and
gratuitous rudeness. Perhaps in response to this, experienced netters often
display a sort of conscious formal politesse in their writing that has passed
out of fashion in other spoken and written media (for example, the phrase "Well
said, sir!" is not uncommon).
Many introverted hackers who are next to inarticulate in person communicate
with considerable fluency over the net, perhaps precisely because they can
forget on an unconscious level that they are dealing with people and thus don't
feel stressed and anxious as they would face to face.
Though it is considered gauche to publicly criticize posters for poor spelling
or grammar, the network places a premium on literacy and clarity of expression.
It may well be that future historians of literature will see in it a revival of
the great tradition of personal letters as art.
:Hacker Speech Style:
=====================
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word
choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of
contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant
attitude are highly valued --- but an underlying seriousness and intelligence
are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and
identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless,
excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by
scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In contrast
with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout
hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions ---
or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by
the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done so much
programming that distinguishes between
if (going) {
and
if (!going) {
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it seems to be asking the
opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits an answer in the
opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were
taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. In some other
languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation
is standard and the problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves
wishing for a word like French `si' or German `doch' with which one could
unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them.
The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative
knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.
Here's a related quirk. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a
question like "So, are you working on finding that bug *now* or leaving it
until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is,
"Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!").
:International Style:
=====================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in
American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though
the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from
English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the
local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to
travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth English'. These are intended
to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken
in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. ---
though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry
on {{Commonwealth Hackish}} reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary
differences from U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia are reported to often
use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation.
Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that are influenced by
their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are
parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers.
:How to Use the Lexicon:
:Pronunciation Guide:
=====================
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that are
neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious
compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to be
interpreted using the following conventions:
1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent
follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary
accent in some words of four or more syllables).
2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is
always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft
("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound
that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in
"pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of
"loch" or "l'chaim".
3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus
(for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aitch el el/. /Z/ may
be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
4. Vowels are represented as follows:
a
back, that
ar
far, mark
aw
flaw, caught
ay
bake, rain
e
less, men
ee
easy, ski
eir
their, software
i
trip, hit
i:
life, sky
o
father, palm
oh
flow, sew
oo
loot, through
or
more, door
ow
out, how
oy
boy, coin
uh
but, some
u
put, foot
y
yet, young
yoo
few, chew
[y]oo
/oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one
that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in
syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would
be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, UNIX
weenies, this does *not* mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!)
:Other Lexicon Conventions:
===========================
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the
letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream
dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters
are sorted after Z. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.
The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (`:') at the left margin.
This convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers that benefit from
knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as context-sensitive as humans.
In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used to bracket
words which themselves have entries in the File. This isn't done all the time
for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a reminder seems useful
that the term has a jargon meaning and one might wish to refer to its entry.
In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from
those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":";
similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}".
Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. A defining
instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an explanation of it.
Prefix * is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage.
We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style
section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of
text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word being
used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an utterance
into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered with single
quotes.
References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX facilities (some of
which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed over USENET). The
UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual,
where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is
games, and n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4,
5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in any case are not
referred to in any of the entries.
Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here:
abbrev.
abbreviation
adj.
adjective
adv.
adverb
alt.
alternate
cav.
caveat
esp.
especially
excl.
exclamation
imp.
imperative
interj.
interjection
n.
noun
obs.
obsolete
pl.
plural
poss.
possibly
pref.
prefix
prob.
probably
prov.
proverbial
quant.
quantifier
suff.
suffix
syn.
synonym (or synonymous with)
v.
verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
var.
variant
vi.
intransitive verb
vt.
transitive verb
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two
possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is
markedly less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have
originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of
abbreviations used in etymologies:
Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Cambridge
the university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
BBN
Bolt, Beranek & Newman
CMU
Carnegie-Mellon University
Commodore
Commodore Business Machines
DEC
The Digital Equipment Corporation
Fairchild
The Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development group
Fidonet
See the {Fidonet} entry
IBM
International Business Machines
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AI Lab
culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups, including the
Tech Model Railroad Club
NRL
Naval Research Laboratories
NYU
New York University
OED
The Oxford English Dictionary
Purdue
Purdue University
SAIL
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at Stanford
University)
SI
From Syst`eme International, the name for the standard
conventions of metric nomenclature used in the sciences
Stanford
Stanford University
Sun
Sun Microsystems
TMRC
Some MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at
MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from `An Abridged Dictionary
of the TMRC Language', originally compiled by Pete Samson in 1959
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
UK
the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)
USENET
See the {USENET} entry
WPI
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active community of
PDP-10 hackers during the 1970s
XEROX PARC
XEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneering research in
user interface design and networking
Yale
Yale University
Some other etymology abbreviations such as {UNIX} and {PDP-10} refer to
technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or other
environments. The fact that a term is labelled with any one of these
abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to that culture.
In particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in quite general
use. We have tried to give some indication of the distribution of speakers in
the usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in the introduction
conspire to make these indications less definite than might be desirable.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These are
usually generalizations suggested by editors or USENET respondents in the
process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These are
- not* represented as established jargon.
:Format For New Entries:
========================
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be considered
donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this File, and may be
used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be edited for accuracy,
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Try to conform to the format already being used --- head-words separated from
text by a colon (double colon for topic entries), cross-references in curly
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Stick to the standard ASCII character set (7-bit printable, no high-half
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tty.
We are looking to expand the file's range of technical specialties covered.
There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific
computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical
analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many
other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are *not* interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks or
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aspects not covered by official histories. We are also not interested in
`joke' entries --- there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow
naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have spread to
the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with you.
We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two different
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The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and re-posted from now on and will
include a version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute --- this is
The Jargon Lexicon
= A =
=====
:abbrev: /*-breev'/, /*-brev'/ n. Common abbreviation for
`abbreviation'.
:ABEND: [ABnormal END] /ah'bend/, /*-bend'/ n. Abnormal
termination (of software); {crash}; {lossage}. Derives from an
error message on the IBM 360; used jokingly by hackers but
seriously mainly by {code grinder}s. Usually capitalized, but may
appear as `abend'. Hackers will try to persuade you that ABEND is
called `abend' because it is what system operators do to the
machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day, and hence
is from the German `Abend' = `Evening'.
:accumulator: n. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it
as a synonym for `register' is a fairly reliable indication that
the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the
architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is
almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example, though
symbolic names for arithmetic registers beginning in `A' derive
from historical use of the term `accumulator' (and not, actually,
from `arithmetic'). Confusingly, though, an `A' register name
prefix may also stand for `address', as for example on the
Motorola 680x0 family. 2. A register being used for arithmetic or
logic (as opposed to addressing or a loop index), especially one
being used to accumulate a sum or count of many items. This use is
in context of a particular routine or stretch of code. "The
FOOBAZ routine uses A3 as an accumulator." 3. One's in-basket
(esp. among old-timers who might use sense 1). "You want this
reviewed? Sure, just put it in the accumulator." (See {stack}.)
:ACK: /ak/ interj. 1. [from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110]
Acknowledge. Used to register one's presence (compare mainstream
*Yo!*). An appropriate response to {ping} or {ENQ}.
2. [from the comic strip "Bloom County"] An exclamation of
surprised disgust, esp. in "Ack pffft!" Semi-humorous.
Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is
distinguished by a following exclamation point. 3. Used to
politely interrupt someone to tell them you understand their point
(see {NAK}). Thus, for example, you might cut off an overly
long explanation with "Ack. Ack. Ack. I get it now".
There is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has
gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}
(sense 2), i.e., "I'm not here").
:ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions
made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to
the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact
entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching input tokens that
might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look as
though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to cope
with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to
{choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner
and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity'
(/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also {ELIZA effect}.
:Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that,
technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind
of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult
to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle
(one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers
find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication
features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of
Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while
cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical
computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch
at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest
thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good
small language screaming to get out from inside its vast,
{elephantine} bulk.
:adger: /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences
that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental
effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.
:admin: /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly
used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge
on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin'
and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site
contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically
on news). Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system
mangler}.
:ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure,
but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only six-letter
filenames. See also {vadding}.
This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars
the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a
maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little
maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words'
{xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game.
Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a
`Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that
also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary
entrance.
:AFJ: {} n. Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke".
Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a hallowed tradition on USENET
and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April
Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal holiday marked by customary
observances on the hacker networks.
:AI: /A-I/ n. Abbreviation for `Artificial Intelligence', so
common that the full form is almost never written or spoken among
hackers.
:AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with
`NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. Used to describe problems or
subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a
solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a
human-level intelligence). A problem that is AI-complete is, in
other words, just too hard.
Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem'
(building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The
Natural Language Problem' (building a system that can understand
and speak a natural language as well as a human). These may appear
to be modular, but all attempts so far (1991) to solve them have
foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence'
they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.
:AI koans: /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen
teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around
various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included
under "{A Selection of AI Koans}" in {appendix
A}). See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and {{Humor,
Hacker}}.
:AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a
{glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple),
this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe
{SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse},
{virgin}.
:AIDX: n. /aydkz/ n. Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version
of UNIX, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000
series. A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this
attempt to combine the two main currents of the UNIX stream
({BSD} and {USG UNIX}) became a {monstrosity} to haunt
system administrators' dreams. For example, if new accounts are
created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps
quickly over 20 due to silly implementation of the user databases.
For a quite similar disease, compare {HP-SUX}. Also, compare
{terminak}, {Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor},
{Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}.
:airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of
failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems
as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and
electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (see
also {KISS Principle}). It is correspondingly argued that the
right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one
basket, after making sure that you've built a really *good*
basket.
:aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
`malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses
(`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias
and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of
allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also
avoidable by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP},
which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a
{stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak},
{memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.
Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with
C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.
:all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC
program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities
that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a
program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without
considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly
common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over
the keyboard interrupt. See {rude}, also {mess-dos}.
:alpha particles: n. See {bit rot}.
:alt: /awlt/ 1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}.
2. n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this
term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to
the Mac (see also {feature key}). Some Mac hackers,
confusingly, reserve `alt' for the Option key. 3. n.obs. [PDP-10;
often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII
ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some
older terminals. Also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character
was almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in
{TECO}, or under TOPS-10 --- always alt, as in "Type alt alt to
end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto
the [ITS] system"). This was probably because alt is more
convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by
another alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character,
for that matter).
:alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.
:altmode: n. Syn. {alt} sense 3.
:Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common LISP: The Language', by
Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second
edition 1990). Note that due to a technical screwup some printings
of the second edition are actually of a color the author describes
succinctly as "yucky green". See also {{book titles}}.
:amoeba: n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.
:amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&'
operator.
:amper: n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
ASCII 0100110) character. See {{ASCII}} for other synonyms.
:angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by
typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than
sign.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.
:angry fruit salad: n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too
many colors. This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo
colors found in canned fruit salad. Too often one sees similar
effects from interface designers using color window systems such as
{X}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy and
attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use.
:annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ [IRC] n. See {robot}.
:AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a
PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
something. "AOS the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now
obsolete. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. See {SOS}. 2. A
{{Multics}}-derived OS supported at one time by Data General. This
was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/. A spoof of the standard
AOS system administrator's manual (`How to Load and Generate
your AOS System') was created, issued a part number, and circulated
as photocopy folklore. It was called `How to Goad and
Levitate your CHAOS System'. 3. Algebraic Operating System, in
reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix
(reverse Polish) notation.
Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask,
does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah,
here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such
instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction
if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if
the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped
if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always;
and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never
skipped.
For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even
more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the
next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant
`do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers
never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST}
(Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster
and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of
assembler programming.
:app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a
systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run
as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers,
program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would
consider all those to be apps. Oppose {tool}, {operating
system}.
:arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed {archive} from a
group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible
program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method
is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression
techniques. See {tar and feather}, {zip}.
:arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving
program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System
Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and
trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC
outperformed ARC on both compression and speed while largely
retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that
could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out
of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are
small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of PKARC was
changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing
suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare
and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better
compression algorithms.
:archive: n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file
by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)',
or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar
and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) made
available from an `archive site' via {FTP} or an email server.
:arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by
`brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as
dynamic storage. So named from a `malloc: corrupt arena'
message emitted when some early versions detected an impossible
value in the free block list. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing
bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the
stack}.
:arg: /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function),
used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from
`pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the
arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare
{param}, {parm}, {var}.
:armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.
:asbestos: adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect
one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos
longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more
generally.
:asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer}
so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made,
and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been
nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as
to the intended application of the cork should consult the
etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a
select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn
this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreement on *which*
few.
:asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET}
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
{flamage}. This is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages.
Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc.
:ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
/as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including an early version of ASCII) used fewer. This
change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters --- a major
{win} --- but it did not provide for accented letters or any
other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S
and the ae-ligature
which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how.
Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names --- some
formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
characters are collected here. See also individual entries for
{bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek},
{splat}, {twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.
This list derives from revision 2.3 of the USENET ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the
particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. Ordinary
parentheticals provide some usage information.
!
Common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>.
Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey;
wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier.
"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark;
double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk;
[rabbit-ears]; double prime.
#
Common: <number sign>; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp;
{crunch}; hex; [mesh]; octothorpe. Rare: flash; crosshatch;
grid; pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}.
$
Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck;
cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of
ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].
%
Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].
&
Common: <ampersand>; amper; and. Rare: address (from C);
reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from
`sh(1)'); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand';
what could be sillier?]
'
Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime;
glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation
mark>; <acute accent>.
()
Common: left/right paren; left/right parenthesis; left/right;
paren/thesis; open/close paren; open/close; open/close
parenthesis; left/right banana. Rare: so/al-ready;
lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; open/close round
bracket, parenthisey/unparenthisey; [wax/wane]; left/right
ear.
*
Common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear;
dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see
{glob}); {Nathan Hale}.
+
Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].
,
Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].
-
Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.
.
Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix
point; full stop; [spot].
/
Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare:
diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].
:
Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].
;
Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],
pit-thwong.
<>
Common: <less/greater than>; left/right angle bracket;
bra/ket; left/right broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read
from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out;
crunch/zap (all from UNIX); [angle/right angle].
=
Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe;
[half-mesh].
?
Common: query; <question mark>; {ques}. Rare: whatmark;
[what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.
@
Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
[whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
<commercial at>.
V
Rare: [book].
[]
Common: left/right square bracket; <opening/closing bracket>;
bracket/unbracket; left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare;
[U turn/U turn back].
\
Common: backslash; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh;
backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; <reverse slant>; reversed
virgule; [backslat].
^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare:
chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of');
fang; pointer (in Pascal).
_
Common: <underline>; underscore; underbar; under. Rare:
score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].
`
Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote;
<grave accent>; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark];
unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push;
<opening single quotation mark>; quasiquote.
{}
Common: open/close brace; left/right brace; left/right
squiggly; left/right squiggly bracket/brace; left/right curly
bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace;
curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; left/right squirrelly;
[embrace/bracelet].
|
Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare:
<vertical line>; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from
UNIX); [spike].
~
Common: <tilde>; squiggle; {twiddle}; not. Rare: approx;
wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].
The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S.
but a bad idea; {{Commonwealth Hackish}} has its own, rather more
apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards
the pound graphic
happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes
call `#' on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the
American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned
commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights
on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash'
outside the U.S.
The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for
underline are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963
version), which had these graphics in those character positions
rather than the modern punctuation characters.
The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same
as tilde in typeset material
but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle
brackets}).
Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#',
`