The Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond (ebook reader android txt) π
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 [45]TWENEX system rather than a host for the AI hackers' beloved [46]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 [47]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
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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 WorksJargon 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 qualityNode: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 Propagatefor historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford)
=> Marginal Hacks HallMicrosoft => 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,
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