The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992. Various

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: ========================

       Table of Contents

      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, clarity and concision.

      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 brackets (doubled for topic entries), pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets, single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set (7-bit printable, no high-half characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a character 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 technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground' meanings or 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 sites.

      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 *your* monument!

The Jargon Lexicon ******************

       Table of Contents

      = 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