The Hackers Dictionary | Page 5

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-technicalsubcultures (bikers, rock fans, surfers, etc). *`jargon': without
qualifier, denotes informal `slangy' languagepeculiar to hackers --- the subject of this
lexicon. *`techspeak': the formal technical vocabulary of programming, computerscience,
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.
: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