The New Hacker's Dictionary by Eric S. Raymond (each kindness read aloud TXT) 📖

version had

26598 lines, 214639 words, 1412243 characters, and 2267 entries.

Version 4.2.1, 5 Mar 2000: Point release to test new production

machinery. This version had 26647 lines, 215040 words, 1414942

characters, and 2269 entries.

Version 4.2.2, 12 Aug 2000: This version had 27171 lines, 219630

words, 1444887 characters, and 2302 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.)

leading up to and including the second paper edition. From now on,

major version number N.00 will probably correspond to the Nth paper

edition. 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 [53]jn11+@andrew.cmu.edu,

Bernie Cosell [54]cosell@bbn.com, Earl Boebert

[55]boebert@SCTC.com, and Joe Morris

[56]jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org.

We were fortunate enough to have the aid of some accomplished

linguists. David Stampe [57]stampe@hawaii.edu and Charles Hoequist

[58]hoequist@bnr.ca contributed valuable criticism; Joe Keane

[59]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 [60]bal@zurich.ai.mit.edu for obtaining permission for

us to use material from the "TMRC Dictionary"; also, Don Libes

[61]libes@cme.nist.gov contributed some appropriate material from

his excellent book "Life With UNIX". We thank Per Lindberg

[62]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

[63]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 [64]msb@sq.com and Steve Summit [65]scs@eskimo.com to

the File and Dictionary; they have read and reread many drafts,

checked facts, caught typos, submitted an amazing number of thoughtful

comments, and done yeoman service in catching typos and minor usage

bobbles. Their rare combination of enthusiasm, persistence,

wide-ranging technical knowledge, and precisionism in matters of

language has been of invaluable help. Indeed, the sustained volume and

quality of Mr. Brader's input over several years and several different

editions has only allowed him to escape co-editor credit by the

slimmest of margins.

Finally, George V. Reilly [66]georgere@microsoft.com helped with TeX

arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions, and Eric

Tiedemann [67]est@thyrsus.com contributed sage advice throughout on

rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.

Node:Jargon Construction, Next:[68]Hacker Writing Style,

Previous:[69]Revision History, Up:[70]Top

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 verb

doubling, soundalike slang, the `-P' convention, overgeneralization,

spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is discussed

below. We also cover the standard comparatives for design quality.

Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization,

and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but

soundalike slang is still largely confined to MIT and other large

universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers

flourish.

[71]Verb Doubling: Doubling a verb may change its semantics

[72]Soundalike Slang: Punning jargon

[73]The -P convention: A LISPy way to form questions

[74]Overgeneralization: Standard abuses of grammar

[75]Spoken Inarticulations: Sighing and <sigh>ing

[76]Anthropomorphization: Homunculi, daemons, and confused

programs

[77]Comparatives: Standard comparatives for design quality

Node:Verb Doubling, Next:[78]Soundalike Slang, Up:[79]Jargon

Construction

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 [80]win, [81]lose, [82]hack,

[83]flame, [84]barf, [85]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 [86]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 infamous examples have included:

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

alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill

Node:Soundalike Slang, Next:[87]The -P convention, Previous:[88]Verb

Doubling, Up:[89]Jargon Construction

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 [90]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

Wall Street Journal => Wall Street Urinal

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

Microsoft => Microsloth

Internet Explorer => Internet Exploiter

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.

Node:The -P convention, Next:[91]Overgeneralization,

Previous:[92]Soundalike Slang, Up:[93]Jargon Construction

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 [94]T and [95]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 [96]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]

Node:Overgeneralization, Next:[97]Spoken Inarticulations,

Previous:[98]The -P convention, Up:[99]Jargon Construction

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 [100]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

Another class of common construction uses the suffix `-itude' to

abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage

arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the

same abstraction through -iness' or-ingness'. Thus:

win => winnitude (a common exclamation)

loss => lossitude

cruft => cruftitude

lame => lameitude

Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for

example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be

called `lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!

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.

The suffix "-full" can also be applied in generalized and fanciful

ways, as in "As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the

system starts thrashing," or "As soon as I have more than one headfull

of ideas, I start writing it all down." A common use is "screenfull",

meaning the amount of text that will fit on one screen, usually in

text mode where you have no choice as to character size. Another

common form is "bufferfull".

However, 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

includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is

[101]meeces, and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is

`cabeese'. This latter has apparently been standard (or at least a

standard joke) among railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years.

On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may

form plurals in `-xen' (see [102]VAXen and [103]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 offrobbozz' (see [104]frobnitz) and

Unices' andTwenices' (rather than Unixes' andTwenexes'; see

[105]Unix, [106]TWENEX in main text). But note that `Twenexen' was

never used, and `Unixen' was not sighted in the wild until the year

2000, thirty years after it might logically have come into use; 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.

Node:Spoken Inarticulations,