The New Hackers Dictionary | Page 3

talking about the
jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish it from 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 hacker 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 or predominantly found among 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
[35]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 new compilations 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
[36]kluge, [37]cruft, and [38]foo. We believe specialist lexicographers
will find many of the historical notes more than casually instructive.
---
Node:Revision History, Next:[39]Jargon Construction, Previous:[40]A
Few Terms, Up:[41]Top
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 ([42]frob and some senses of [43]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, [44]FTPed 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