Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}".

Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. A defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an explanation of it.

Prefix * is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage.

We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered with single quotes.

References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to UNIX facilities (some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed over USENET). The UNIX manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries.

Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here:

abbrev.
abbreviation
adj.
adjective
adv.
adverb
alt.
alternate
cav.
caveat
esp.
especially
excl.
exclamation
imp.
imperative
interj.
interjection
n.
noun
obs.
obsolete
pl.
plural
poss.
possibly
pref.
prefix
prob.
probably
prov.
proverbial
quant.
quantifier
suff.
suffix
syn.
synonym (or synonymous with)
v.
verb (may be transitive or intransitive)
var.
variant
vi.
intransitive verb
vt.
transitive verb

Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is markedly less common than the primary.

Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies:

Berkeley
University of California at Berkeley
Cambridge
the university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts where
MIT happens to be located!)
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: ========================

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 ******************

= 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 is also a usage "ACK?" (from sense 1) meaning "Are you
there?", often used in email when earlier mail has produced no
reply, or during a lull in {talk mode} to see if the person has
gone away (the standard humorous response is of course {NAK}
(sense 2), i.e., "I'm not here").

:ad-hockery: /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions
made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to
the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact
entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching input tokens that
might be typing errors against a symbol table can make it look as
though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case code to cope
with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a program to
{choke}, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in some cleaner
and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery', `ad-hocity'
(/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also {ELIZA effect}.

:Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that,
technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind
of endorsement by fiat; designed by committee, crockish, difficult
to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle
(one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers
find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication
features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of
Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while
cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical
computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch
at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest
thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good
small language screaming to get out from inside its vast,
{elephantine} bulk.

:adger: /aj'r/ [UCLA] vt. To make a bonehead move with consequences
that could have been foreseen with a slight amount of mental
effort. E.g., "He started removing files and promptly adgered the
whole project". Compare {dumbass attack}.

:admin: /ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; very commonly
used in speech or on-line to refer to the systems person in charge
on a computer. Common constructions on this include `sysadmin'
and `site admin' (emphasizing the administrator's role as a site
contact for email and news) or `newsadmin' (focusing specifically
on news). Compare {postmaster}, {sysop}, {system
mangler}.

:ADVENT: /ad'vent/ n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first
implemented on the {PDP-10} by Will Crowther as an attempt at
computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a
puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods. Now better known as Adventure,
but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only 6-letter
filenames. See also {vadding}.

This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style now expected in
text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines that have
become fixtures of hacker-speak: "A huge green fierce snake bars
the way!" "I see no X here" (for some noun X). "You are in a
maze of twisty little passages, all alike." "You are in a little
maze of twisty passages, all different." The `magic words'
{xyzzy} and {plugh} also derive from this game.

Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the
Mammoth & Flint Ridge cave system; it actually *has* a
`Colossal Cave' and a `Bedquilt' as in the game, and the `Y2' that
also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to a secondary
entrance.

:AFJ: n. Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke".
Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a hallowed tradition on USENET
and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April
Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal holiday marked by customary
observances on the hacker networks.

:AI-complete: /A-I k*m-pleet'/ [MIT, Stanford: by analogy with
`NP-complete' (see {NP-})] adj. Used to describe problems or
subproblems in AI, to indicate that the solution presupposes a
solution to the `strong AI problem' (that is, the synthesis of a
human-level intelligence). A problem that is AI-complete is, in
other words, just too hard.

Examples of AI-complete problems are `The Vision Problem'
(building a system that can see as well as a human) and `The
Natural Language Problem' (building a system that can understand
and speak a natural language as well as a human). These may appear
to be modular, but all attempts so far (1991) to solve them have
foundered on the amount of context information and `intelligence'
they seem to require. See also {gedanken}.

:AI koans: /A-I koh'anz/ pl.n. A series of pastiches of Zen
teaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Lab around
various major figures of the Lab's culture (several are included
under "{A Selection of AI Koans}" in {appendix
A}). See also {ha ha only serious}, {mu}, and {{Humor,
Hacker}}.

:AIDS: /aydz/ n. Short for A* Infected Disk Syndrome (`A*' is a
{glob} pattern that matches, but is not limited to, Apple),
this condition is quite often the result of practicing unsafe
{SEX}. See {virus}, {worm}, {Trojan horse},
{virgin}.

:AIDX: n. /aydkz/ n. Derogatory term for IBM's perverted version
of UNIX, AIX, especially for the AIX 3.? used in the IBM RS/6000
series. A victim of the dreaded "hybridism" disease, this
attempt to combine the two main currents of the UNIX stream
({BSD} and {USG UNIX}) became a {monstrosity} to haunt
system administrators' dreams. For example, if new accounts are
created while many users are logged on, the load average jumps
quickly over 20 due to silly implementation of the user databases.
For a quite similar disease, compare {HP-SUX}. Also, compare
{terminak}, {Macintrash} {Nominal Semidestructor},
{Open DeathTrap}, {ScumOS}, {sun-stools}.

:airplane rule: n. "Complexity increases the possibility of
failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems
as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and
electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness (see
also {KISS Principle}). It is correspondingly argued that the
right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one
basket, after making sure that you've built a really *good*
basket.

:aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
`malloc(3)' or equivalent. If more than one pointer addresses
(`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias
and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of
allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also
avoidable by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP},
which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a
{stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage},
{smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak},
{memory smash}, {overrun screw}, {spam}.

Historical note: Though this term is nowadays associated with
C programming, it was already in use in a very similar sense in the
Algol-60 and FORTRAN communities in the 1960s.

:all-elbows: adj. Of a TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) IBM PC
program, such as the N pop-up calendar and calculator utilities
that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a
program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without
considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly
common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over
the keyboard interrupt. See {rude}, also {mess-dos}.

:alpha particles: n. See {bit rot}.

:alt: /awlt/ 1. n. The alt shift key on an IBM PC or {clone}.
2. n. The `clover' or `Command' key on a Macintosh; use of this
term usually reveals that the speaker hacked PCs before coming to
the Mac (see also {feature key}). Some Mac hackers,
confusingly, reserve `alt' for the Option key. 3. n.obs. [PDP-10;
often capitalized to ALT] Alternate name for the ASCII
ESC character (ASCII 0011011), after the keycap labeling on some
older terminals. Also `altmode' (/awlt'mohd/). This character
was almost never pronounced `escape' on an ITS system, in
{TECO}, or under TOPS-10 --- always alt, as in "Type alt alt to
end a TECO command" or "alt-U onto the system" (for "log onto
the [ITS] system"). This was probably because alt is more
convenient to say than `escape', especially when followed by
another alt or a character (or another alt *and* a character,
for that matter).

:alt bit: /awlt bit/ [from alternate] adj. See {meta bit}.

:altmode: n. Syn. {alt} sense 3.

:Aluminum Book: [MIT] n. `Common LISP: The Language', by
Guy L. Steele Jr. (Digital Press, first edition 1984, second
edition 1990). Note that due to a technical screwup some printings
of the second edition are actually of a color the author describes
succinctly as "yucky green". See also {{book titles}}.

:amoeba: n. Humorous term for the Commodore Amiga personal computer.

:amp off: [Purdue] vt. To run in {background}. From the UNIX shell `&'
operator.

:amper: n. Common abbreviation for the name of the ampersand (`&',
ASCII 0100110) character. See {{ASCII}} for other synonyms.

:angle brackets: n. Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). The {Real World} angle brackets used by
typographers are actually taller than a less-than or greater-than
sign.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.

:angry fruit salad: n. A bad visual-interface design that uses too
many colors. This derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo
colors found in canned fruit salad. Too often one sees similar
effects from interface designers using color window systems such as
{X}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy and
attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term use.

:annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ [IRC] n. See {robot}.

:AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay-os/ (West Coast) [based on a
PDP-10 increment instruction] vt.,obs. To increase the amount of
something. "AOS the campfire." Usage: considered silly, and now
obsolete. Now largely supplanted by {bump}. See {SOS}. 2. A
{{Multics}}-derived OS supported at one time by Data General. This
was pronounced /A-O-S/ or /A-os/. A spoof of the standard
AOS system administrator's manual (`How to Load and Generate
your AOS System') was created, issued a part number, and circulated
as photocopy folklore. It was called `How to Goad and
Levitate your CHAOS System'. 3. Algebraic Operating System, in
reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix
(reverse Polish) notation.

Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10}
instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added
1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask,
does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah,
here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such
instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction
if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if
the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped
if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always;
and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never
skipped.

For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even
more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the
next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant
`do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers
never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST}
(Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster
and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of
assembler programming.

:app: /ap/ n. Short for `application program', as opposed to a
systems program. What systems vendors are forever chasing
developers to create for their environments so they can sell more
boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run
as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers,
program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would
consider all those to be apps. Oppose {tool}, {operating
system}.

:arc: [primarily MSDOS] vt. To create a compressed {archive} from a
group of files using SEA ARC, PKWare PKARC, or a compatible
program. Rapidly becoming obsolete as the ARC compression method
is falling into disuse, having been replaced by newer compression
techniques. See {tar and feather}, {zip}.

:arc wars: [primarily MSDOS] n. {holy wars} over which archiving
program one should use. The first arc war was sparked when System
Enhancement Associates (SEA) sued PKWare for copyright and
trademark infringement on its ARC program. PKWare's PKARC
outperformed ARC on both compression and speed while largely
retaining compatibility (it introduced a new compression type that
could be disabled for backward-compatibility). PKWare settled out
of court to avoid enormous legal costs (both SEA and PKWare are
small companies); as part of the settlement, the name of PKARC was
changed to PKPAK. The public backlash against SEA for bringing
suit helped to hasten the demise of ARC as a standard when PKWare
and others introduced new, incompatible archivers with better
compression algorithms.

:archive: n. 1. A collection of several files bundled into one file
by a program such as `ar(1)', `tar(1)', `cpio(1)',
or {arc} for shipment or archiving (sense 2). See also {tar
and feather}. 2. A collection of files or archives (sense 1) made
available from an `archive site' via {FTP} or an email server.

:arena: [UNIX] n. The area of memory attached to a process by
`brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as
dynamic storage. So named from a semi-mythical `malloc:
corrupt arena' message supposedly emitted when some early versions
became terminally confused. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing
bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}.

:arg: /arg/ n. Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function),
used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from
`pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the
arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare
{param}, {parm}, {var}.

:armor-plated: n. Syn. for {bulletproof}.

:asbestos: adj. Used as a modifier to anything intended to protect
one from {flame}s. Important cases of this include {asbestos
longjohns} and {asbestos cork award}, but it is used more
generally.

:asbestos cork award: n. Once, long ago at MIT, there was a {flamer}
so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made,
and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been
nominated for the `asbestos cork award'. Persons in any doubt as
to the intended application of the cork should consult the
etymology under {flame}. Since then, it is agreed that only a
select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn
this dubious dignity --- but there is no agreement on *which*
few.

:asbestos longjohns: n. Notional garments often donned by {USENET}
posters just before emitting a remark they expect will elicit
{flamage}. This is the most common of the {asbestos} coinages.
Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos overcoat', etc.

:ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange]
/as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day
computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier
codes (including an early version of ASCII) used fewer. This
change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters --- a major
{win} --- but it did not provide for accented letters or any
other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S
and the ae-ligature
which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse,
though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how.

Computers are much pickier and less flexible about spelling than
humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about
characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal
shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names --- some
formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
characters are collected here. See also individual entries for
{bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek},
{splat}, {twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}.

This list derives from revision 2.3 of the USENET ASCII
pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order;
character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character,
common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by
names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names
are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the
particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. Ordinary
parentheticals provide some usage information.

!
Common: {bang}; pling; excl; shriek; <exclamation mark>.
Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey;
wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier.

"
Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark;
double-glitch; <quotation marks>; <dieresis>; dirk;
[rabbit-ears]; double prime.

#
Common: <number sign>; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp;
{crunch}; hex; [mesh]; octothorpe. Rare: flash; crosshatch;
grid; pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; {splat}.

$
Common: dollar; <dollar sign>. Rare: currency symbol; buck;
cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of
ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].

%
Common: percent; <percent sign>; mod; grapes. Rare:
[double-oh-seven].

&
Common: <ampersand>; amper; and. Rare: address (from C);
reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from
`sh(1)'); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand';
what could be sillier?]

'
Common: single quote; quote; <apostrophe>. Rare: prime;
glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation
mark>; <acute accent>.

()
Common: left/right paren; left/right parenthesis; left/right;
paren/thesis; open/close paren; open/close; open/close
parenthesis; left/right banana. Rare: so/al-ready;
lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; open/close round
bracket, parenthisey/unparenthisey; [wax/wane]; left/right
ear.

*
Common: star; [{splat}]; <asterisk>. Rare: wildcard; gear;
dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see
{glob}); {Nathan Hale}.

+
Common: <plus>; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].

,
Common: <comma>. Rare: <cedilla>; [tail].

-
Common: dash; <hyphen>; <minus>. Rare: [worm]; option; dak;
bithorpe.

.
Common: dot; point; <period>; <decimal point>. Rare: radix
point; full stop; [spot].

/
Common: slash; stroke; <slant>; forward slash. Rare:
diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].

:
Common: <colon>. Rare: dots; [two-spot].

;
Common: <semicolon>; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid],
pit-thwong.

<>
Common: <less/greater than>; left/right angle bracket;
bra/ket; left/right broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read
from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out;
crunch/zap (all from UNIX); [angle/right angle].

=
Common: <equals>; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe;
[half-mesh].

?
Common: query; <question mark>; {ques}. Rare: whatmark;
[what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.

@
Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
[whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
<commercial at>.