Finally, George V. Reilly <gvr@cs.brown.edu> helped with TeX arcana and painstakingly proofread some 2.7 and 2.8 versions; Steve Summit <scs@adam.mit.edu> contributed a number of excellent new entries and many small improvements to 2.9.10; and Eric Tiedemann <est@thyrsus.com> contributed sage advice throughout on rhetoric, amphigory, and philosophunculism.
: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 the following:
: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 {win}, {lose}, {hack}, {flame}, {barf}, {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 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 classics include 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, and alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill.
: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 {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