Chapter V: Rare: book (8)

:glark: /glark/ /vt./ To figure something out from context.
"The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally
glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was
originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many
nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be
glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas
Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January
1981 "Scientific American"). It is conjectured that hackish
usage mutated the verb to `glark' because {glork} was already
an established jargon term. Compare {grok}, {zen}.

:glass: /n./ [IBM] Synonym for {silicon}.

:glass tty: /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ /n./ A terminal
that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or
software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other
printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both:
like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like
a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is
the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor
control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal},
{smart terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (Appendix
A) for an interesting true story about a glass tty.

:glassfet: /glas'fet/ /n./ [by analogy with MOSFET, the
acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor']
Syn. {firebottle}, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.

:glitch: /glich/ [from German `glitschig' to slip, via
Yiddish `glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. /n./ A sudden interruption
in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch' (also {power hit}), of
grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. In
jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say,
"Sorry, I just glitched". 2. /vi./ To commit a glitch. See
{gritch}. 3. /vt./ [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp.
several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in
order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the
eye. 4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.

All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is
now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit
change, and the outputs change to some {random} value for some
very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If
another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading
the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to
debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic {heisenbug}s).

:glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ /v.,n./ [Unix] To expand
special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing
(the action is also called `globbing'). The Unix conventions for
filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many
hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or
news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the
following:

*
wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})

?
wildcard for any single character (generally read this way
only at the beginning or in the middle of a word)

[]
delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters

{}
alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus,
`foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'

Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the
talk.politics subgroups on {Usenet}). Other examples are given
under the entry for {X}. Note that glob patterns are similar,
but not identical, to those used in {regexp}s.

Historical note: The jargon usage derives from `glob', the
name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne
versions of the Unix shell.

:glork: /glork/ 1. /interj./ Term of mild surprise, usually
tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of
two hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed.
2. Used as a name for just about anything. See {foo}.
3. /vt./ Similar to {glitch}, but usually used reflexively. "My
program just glorked itself." See also {glark}.

:glue: /n./ Generic term for any interface logic or protocol
that connects two component blocks. For example, {Blue Glue} is
IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to
connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.

:gnarly: /nar'lee/ /adj./ Both {obscure} and {hairy}
(sense 1). "{Yow!} -- the tuned assembler implementation of
BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage
in surfer slang.

:GNU: /gnoo/, *not* /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not
Unix!', see {{recursive acronym}}] A Unix-workalike development
effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<[email protected]>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two
tools designed for this project, have become very popular in
hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to
proselytize for RMS's position that information is community
property and all software source should be shared. One of its
slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this
remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of
designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors),
many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to
produce large amounts of high-quality software for free
redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur.
See {EMACS}, {copyleft}, {General Public Virus},
{Linux}. 2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <[email protected]>,
founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.

:GNUMACS: /gnoo'maks/ /n./ [contraction of `GNU EMACS']
Often-heard abbreviated name for the {GNU} project's flagship
tool, {EMACS}. Used esp. in contrast with {GOSMACS}.

:go flatline: /v./ [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of
EEG traces upon brain-death] (also adjectival `flatlined'). 1. To
{die}, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker
parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a
video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.

:go root: /vi./ [Unix] To temporarily enter {root mode} in
order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in
Australia, where /v./ `root' refers to animal sex.

:go-faster stripes: /n./ [UK] Syn. {chrome}. Mainstream in
some parts of UK.

:gobble: /vt./ 1. To consume, usu. used with `up'. "The
output spy gobbles characters out of a {tty} output buffer."
2. To obtain, usu. used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down
a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also {snarf}.

:Godwin's Law: /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows
longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once
this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis
has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's
Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on
thread length in those groups.

:Godzillagram: /god-zil'*-gram/ /n./ [from Japan's national
hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every
machine in the universe. The typical case is an IP datagram whose
destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few
gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this case!
2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536
octets. Compare {super source quench}.

:golden: /adj./ [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When
used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk',
`golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec,
ready-to-ship software version. Compare {platinum-iridium}.

:golf-ball printer: /n. obs./ The IBM 2741, a slow but
letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM
Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a little spherical
frob bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters
arranged on four parallels of latitude; one could change the font
by swapping in a different golf ball. The print element spun and
jerked alarmingly in action and when in motion was sometimes
described as an `infuriated golf ball'. This was the technology
that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact
completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead
of its time -- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20,
until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped
devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.

:gonk: /gonk/ /vi.,n./ 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the
truth beyond any reasonable recognition. In German the term is
(mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'.
"You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of
gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're pulling
my leg). See also {gonkulator}. 2. [British] To grab some
sleep at an odd time; compare {gronk out}.

:gonkulator: /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ /n./ [from the old
"Hogan's Heroes" TV series] A pretentious piece of equipment
that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe
one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See {gonk}.

:gonzo: /gon'zoh/ /adj./ [from Hunter S. Thompson]
Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of
collections of source code, source files, or individual functions.
Has some of the connotations of {moby} and {hairy}, but
without the implication of obscurity or complexity.

:Good Thing: /n.,adj./ Often capitalized; always pronounced as
if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a
position to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with
on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites
relaying netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill
side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the
self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good
Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC
is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has
drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose {Bad
Thing}.

:gopher: /n./ A type of Internet service first floated around
1991 and now (1994) being obsolesced by the World Wide Web. Gopher
presents a menuing interface to a tree or graph of links;
the links can be to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher
menus arbitrarily far across the net.

Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed
at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota
Gophers (a sports team). Others claim the word derives from
American slang `gofer' (from "go for", dialectical "go fer"),
one whose job is to run and fetch things. Finally, observe that
gophers (aka woodchucks) dig long tunnels, and the idea of
tunneling through the net to find information was a defining
metaphor for the developers. Probably all three things were true,
but with the first two coming first and the gopher-tunnel metaphor
serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to the project as it
developed out of its concept stage.

:gopher hole: /n./ 1. Any access to a {gopher}. 2. [Amateur
Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a {wormhole} (sense
2), from which this term was coined. A gopher hole links two
amateur packet relays through some non-ham radio medium.

:gorets: /gor'ets/ /n./ The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own
meaning. Found esp. on the Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets, which
seems to be a running contest to redefine the word by implication
in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that
no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former
Soviet Union informs me that `gorets' is Russian for `mountain
dweller' --ESR] Compare {frink}.

:gorilla arm: /n./ The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens
as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the
early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those {spiffy}
touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to
hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions.
After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore,
cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while
using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now
considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers;
"Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going
to fly in *real* use?".

:gorp: /gorp/ /n./ [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's
food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another {metasyntactic
variable}, like {foo} and {bar}.

:GOSMACS: /goz'maks/ /n./ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS']
The first {EMACS}-in-C implementation, predating but now largely
eclipsed by {GNUMACS}. Originally freeware; a commercial
version is now modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author,
James Gosling, went on to invent {NeWS} and the programming
language Java; the latter earned him {demigod} status.

:Gosperism: /gos'p*r-izm/ /n./ A hack, invention, or saying
due to arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits
its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the
entries in {HAKMEM} are Gosperisms; see also {life}.

:gotcha: /n./ A {misfeature} of a system, especially a
programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or
mistakes because it both enticingly easy to invoke and completely
unexpected and/or unreasonable in its outcome. For example, a
classic gotcha in {C} is the fact that `if (a=b) {code;}'
is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the
value of `b' into `a' and then executes `code' if
`a' is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was
`if (a==b) {code;}', which executes `code' if `a'
and `b' are equal.

:GPL: /G-P-L/ /n./ Abbreviation for `General Public
License' in widespread use; see {copyleft}, {General Public
Virus}.

:GPV: /G-P-V/ /n./ Abbrev. for {General Public Virus} in
widespread use.

:grault: /grawlt/ /n./ Yet another {metasyntactic
variable}, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the
{GOSMACS} documentation. See {corge}.

:gray goo: /n./ A hypothetical substance composed of
{sagan}s of sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed
to make copies of themselves out of whatever is available. The
image that goes with the term is one of the entire biosphere of
Earth being eventually converted to robot goo. This is the
simplest of the {{nanotechnology}} disaster scenarios, easily
refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental
abundances. Compare {blue goo}.

:Great Renaming: /n./ The {flag day} in 1985 on which all of
the non-local groups on the {Usenet} had their names changed
from the net.- format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.
Used esp. in discussing the history of newsgroup names. "The
oldest sources group is comp.sources.misc; before the Great
Renaming, it was net.sources."

:Great Runes: /n./ Uppercase-only text or display messages.
Some archaic operating systems still emit these. See also
{runes}, {smash case}, {fold case}.

Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of
long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the Teletype
Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code
lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been
decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER
or all lower. The Question Of The Day was therefore, which one to
choose. A study was conducted on readability under various
conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won;
it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus
much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the
letters are mangled or partly obscured. The results were filtered
up through {management}. The chairman of Teletype killed the
proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion:

"It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity
correctly."

In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition
triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on
most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for
corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s.
Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years.

:Great Worm, the: /n./ The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated
by {RTM}. This is a play on Tolkien (compare {elvish},
{elder days}). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth
books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire
regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM
hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history;
certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.

:great-wall: /vi.,n./ [from SF fandom] A mass expedition to an
oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style
and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food
to order, expressed as "Get N - 1 entrees"; the value of
N, which is the number of people in the group, can be
inferred from context (see {N}). See {{oriental food}},
{ravs}, {stir-fried random}.

:Green Book: /n./ 1. One of the three standard {{PostScript}}
references: "PostScript Language Program Design", bylined
`Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN
0-201-14396-8); see also {Red Book}, {Blue Book}, and the
{White Book} (sense 2). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: "Smalltalk-80: Bits of
History, Words of Advice", by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983;
QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with
blue and red books). 3. The "X/Open Compatibility Guide",
which defines an international standard {{Unix}} environment that
is a proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a
standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the
like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in
Europe. See {Purple Book}. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating
Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book".
5. Any of the 1992 standards issued by the CCITT's tenth plenary
assembly. These include, among other things, the X.400 email
standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also
{{book titles}}.

:green bytes: /n./ (also `green words') 1. Meta-information
embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as
opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file
or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting
(ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were being debated and the
diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn
in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any
self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things,
green bytes describing the packing method for the image." Compare
{out-of-band}, {zigamorph}, {fence} (sense 1).

:green card: /n./ [after the "IBM System/360 Reference
Data" card] A summary of an assembly language, even if the color is
not green. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the
use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can
check the addressing mode for that instruction." Some green cards
are actually booklets.

The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370
was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM
refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room
at Yorktown in 1978. A {luser} overheard one of the programmers
ask another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and
passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser
turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never
to return.

:green lightning: /n./ [IBM] 1. Apparently random flashing
streaks on the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is
being downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed,
as some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that
`something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later
microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually
*programmed* to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any
bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or
marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000
architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
lightning". See also {feature} (sense 6).

:green machine: /n./ A computer or peripheral device that has
been designed and built to military specifications for field
equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of
temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab
`uniform' paint used for military equipment.

:Green's Theorem: /prov./ [TMRC] For any story, in any group of
people there will be at least one person who has not heard the
story. A refinement of the theorem states that there will be
*exactly* one person (if there were more than one, it wouldn't
be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of this theorem is a
play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --ESR]

:grep: /grep/ /vi./ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p,
where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search
for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches
to it, via {{Unix}} `grep(1)'] To rapidly scan a file or set
of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing
through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping
around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep
the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?"
See also {vgrep}.

:grilf: // /n./ Girlfriend. Like {newsfroup} and
{filk}, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to have
originated sometime in 1992 on {Usenet}. [A friend tells me
there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel "Watchers Of The Dark", in
which alien species after species goes insane and begins to chant
"Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that
the word means "Liar!" I hope this has nothing to do with the
popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR]

:grind: /vt./ 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To prettify hardcopy of
code, especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords
and comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
{prettyprint} was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the {{nroff}}, {{troff}}, {{TeX}}, or Scribe
source. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to {crunch} or {grovel}. Grinding has a
connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind
a disk, network, etc. See also {hog}. 4. To make the whole
system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind grind'
/excl./ Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"

:grind crank: /n./ A mythical accessory to a terminal. A
crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing
noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not
refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate
gesture and noise. See {grind} and {wugga wugga}.

Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the
days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known
as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice
University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for
use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large
program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and
gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button.
This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow
down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of
interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and
then keep on cranking.

:gripenet: /n./ [IBM] A wry (and thoroughly unofficial) name
for IBM's internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by
IBMers to voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be
taboo in more formal channels.

:gritch: /grich/ [MIT] 1. /n./ A complaint (often caused by a
{glitch}). 2. /vi./ To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch
gritch". 3. A synonym for {glitch} (as verb or noun).

Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from
{glitch}, with which it is often confused. Back in the early
1960s, when `glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art,
the Burton House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a
blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote complaints,
suggestions, and witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this
tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word
"gritch" was described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and
"bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at least historically incorrect.

:grok: /grok/, var. /grohk/ /vt./ [from the novel
"Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it
is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically
`to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in
fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes
intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast {zen}, which is
similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash.
See also {glark}. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely
sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the
`void' type these days."

:gronk: /gronk/ /vt./ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic
strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] 1. To
clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
than `to {frob}' (sense 2). 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash,
or similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette
drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go
"grink, gronk".

:gronk out: /vi./ To cease functioning. Of people, to go home
and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all
tomorrow."

:gronked: /adj./ 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was
gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition
of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing
that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare
{broken}, which means about the same as {gronk} used of
hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in
people.

:grovel: /vi./ 1. To work interminably and without apparent
progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'.
"The file scavenger has been groveling through the /usr
directories for 10 minutes now." Compare {grind} and
{crunch}. Emphatic form: `grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine
minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the
entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I
grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find
the command I wanted."

:grunge: /gruhnj/ /n./ 1. That which is grungy, or that which
makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to
changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North
America is {dead code}.

:gubbish: /guhb'*sh/ /n./ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and
`rubbish'; may have originated with SF author Philip K. Dick]
Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The
opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported; in fact, it was
British slang during the 19th century and appears in Dickens.

:guiltware: /gilt'weir/ /n./ 1. A piece of {freeware}
decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author
worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one
does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money.
2. A piece of {shareware} that works.

:gumby: /guhm'bee/ /n./ [from a class of Monty Python
characters, poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation
character] An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in
`gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'. 2. [NRL] /n./ A bureaucrat,
or other technical incompetent who impedes the progress of real
work. 3. /adj./ Relating to things typically associated with
people
in sense 2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave
him gumby work that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel
screwed up my plane tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")

:gun: /vt./ [ITS: from the `:GUN' command] To forcibly
terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot
left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I
gunned it." Usage: now rare. Compare {can}, {blammo}.

:gunch: /guhnch/ /vt./ [TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a
device that has almost (but not quite) produced the desired result.
Implies a threat to {mung}.

:gurfle: /ger'fl/ /interj./ An expression of shocked
disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by
next week. Gurfle!" Compare {weeble}.

:guru: /n./ [Unix] An expert. Implies not only {wizard}
skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others.
Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other
systems, as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}.

:guru meditation: /n./ Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix
(sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the
system crashes, a cryptic message of the form "GURU MEDITATION
#XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the problem was.
An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a
{guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.

This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the
Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was
basically a plastic board built onto a joystick-like device; it was
sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It
is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system
programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a
solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep
the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating
guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04 (actually in
2.00, a buggy post-2.0 release on the A3000 only).

:gweep: /gweep/ [WPI] 1. /v./ To {hack}, usually at night.
At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who gweeped could often be found at
the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing the
{PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent who was there at
the time opines that the term was originally onomatopoetic,
describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint terminals long
connected to the PDP-10. The term has survived the demise of those
technologies, however, and was still alive in late 1991. "I'm
going to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning." "I gweep
from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week." 2. /n./ One who habitually
gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a hard-core gweep,
mumbles code in his sleep."

= H = =====

:h: [from SF fandom] A method of `marking' common words,
i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a
nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish
catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago.
H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s
counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom
either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three
overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has
become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone,
Rhealstone, etc.); this is probably patterning on the original
Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the
fannish/counterculture h infix.

:ha ha only serious: [from SF fandom, orig. as mutation of
HHOK, `Ha Ha Only Kidding'] A phrase (often seen abbreviated as
HHOS) that aptly captures the flavor of much hacker discourse.
Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that
are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting
amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and
self-parody. This lexicon contains many examples of
ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety
of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by
hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously
marks a person as an outsider, a {wannabee}, or in {larval
stage}. For further enlightenment on this subject, consult any Zen
master. See also {{hacker humor}}, and {AI koans}.

:hack: 1. /n./ Originally, a quick job that produces what is
needed, but not well. 2. /n./ An incredibly good, and perhaps very
time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is needed.
3. /vt./ To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this
heat!" 4. /vt./ To work on something (typically a program). In an
immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO."
In a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?"
"I hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly
equivalent to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I
hack solid-state physics." See {Hacking X for Y}. 5. /vt./ To
pull a prank on. See sense 2 and {hacker} (sense 5). 6. /vi./ To
interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than
goal-directed way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking."
7. /n./ Short for {hacker}. 8. See {nethack}. 9. [MIT] /v./ To
explore the basements, roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large,
institutional building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and
(since this is usually performed at educational institutions) the
Campus Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar
to playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and
{Zork}. See also {vadding}.

Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy hacking'
(a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting among
hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but friendly
comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more on this
totipotent term see "{The Meaning of `Hack'}". See
also {neat hack}, {real hack}.

:hack attack: /n./ [poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack'
from ads for the McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big
hack attack' is reported] Nearly synonymous with {hacking run},
though the latter more strongly implies an all-nighter.

:hack mode: /n./ 1. What one is in when hacking, of course.
2. More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The
Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every
good hacker is part mystic). Ability to enter such concentration
at will correlates strongly with wizardliness; it is one of the
most important skills learned during {larval stage}. Sometimes
amplified as `deep hack mode'.

Being yanked out of hack mode (see {priority interrupt}) may be
experienced as a physical shock, and the sensation of being in hack
mode is more than a little habituating. The intensity of this
experience is probably by itself sufficient explanation for the
existence of hackers, and explains why many resist being promoted
out of positions where they can code. See also {cyberspace}
(sense 2).

Some aspects of hackish etiquette will appear quite odd to an
observer unaware of the high value placed on hack mode. For
example, if someone appears at your door, it is perfectly okay to
hold up a hand (without turning one's eyes away from the screen) to
avoid being interrupted. One may read, type, and interact with the
computer for quite some time before further acknowledging the
other's presence (of course, he or she is reciprocally free to
leave without a word). The understanding is that you might be in
{hack mode} with a lot of delicate {state} (sense 2) in your
head, and you dare not {swap} that context out until you have
reached a good point to pause. See also {juggling eggs}.

:hack on: /vt./ To {hack}; implies that the subject is some
pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to
something one might {hack up}.

:hack together: /vt./ To throw something together so it will
work. Unlike `kluge together' or {cruft together}, this does
not necessarily have negative connotations.

:hack up: /vt./ To {hack}, but generally implies that the
result is a hack in sense 1 (a quick hack). Contrast this with
{hack on}. To `hack up on' implies a {quick-and-dirty}
modification to an existing system. Contrast {hacked up};
compare {kluge up}, {monkey up}, {cruft together}.

:hack value: /n./ Often adduced as the reason or motivation for
expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being
that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP had
features for reading and printing Roman numerals, which were
installed purely for hack value. See {display hack} for one
method of computing hack value, but this cannot really be
explained, only experienced. As Louis Armstrong once said when
asked to explain jazz: "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know."
(Feminists please note Fats Waller's explanation of rhythm: "Lady,
if you got to ask, you ain't got it.")

:hacked off: /adj./ [analogous to `pissed off'] Said of
system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy
owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be
victimized by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically
illegal, or even overtly criminal activities. For example, having
unreadable files in your home directory called `worm',
`lockpick', or `goroot' would probably be an effective (as well
as impressively obvious and stupid) way to get your sysadmin hacked
off at you.

It has been pointed out that there is precedent for this usage in
U.S. Navy slang, in which officers under discipline are sometimes
said to be "in hack" and one may speak of "hacking off the C.O.".

:hacked up: /adj./ Sufficiently patched, kluged, and tweaked
that the surgical scars are beginning to crowd out normal tissue
(compare {critical mass}). Not all programs that are hacked
become `hacked up'; if modifications are done with some eye to
coherence and continued maintainability, the software may emerge
better for the experience. Contrast {hack up}.

:hacker: /n./ [originally, someone who makes furniture with an
axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most
users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who
programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A
person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is
good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program,
or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who
fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One
might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the
intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing
limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to
discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password
hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is
{cracker}.

The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global
community defined by the net (see {network, the} and
{Internet address}). It also implies that the person described
is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see
{hacker ethic}).

It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe
oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an
elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new
members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego
satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if
you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled
{bogus}). See also {wannabee}.

:hacker ethic: /n./ 1. The belief that information-sharing
is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of
hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and
facilitating access to information and to computing resources
wherever possible. 2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and
exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no
theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no
means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe
to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and
giving away free software. A few go further and assert that
*all* information should be free and *any* proprietary
control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the {GNU}
project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of
cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But
the belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least
moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign'
crackers (see also {samurai}). On this view, it may be one of
the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system,
and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a
{superuser} account, exactly how it was done and how the hole
can be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) {tiger
team}.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker
ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share
technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing
resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as
{Usenet}, {FidoNet} and Internet (see {Internet address})
can function without central control because of this trait; they
both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be
hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.

:hacker humor:: A distinctive style of shared
intellectual humor found among hackers, having the following marked
characteristics:

1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor
having to do with confusion of metalevels (see {meta}). One way
to make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her
with "GREEN" written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that
this is funny only the first time).

2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs,
such as specifications (see {write-only memory}), standards
documents, language descriptions (see {INTERCAL}), and even
entire scientific theories (see {quantum bogodynamics},
{computron}).

3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.

4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.

5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive
currents of intelligence in it -- for example, old Warner Brothers
and Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early
B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this
trait with elements of high camp and slapstick is especially
favored.

6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas
in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See {has the X nature},
{Discordianism}, {zen}, {ha ha only serious}, {AI koans}.

See also {filk}, {retrocomputing}, and {A Portrait of J.
Random Hacker} in Appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that
all 6 of these traits are really aspects of one thing that is
incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and
(b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable
(though in a less marked form) throughout {{science-fiction
fandom}}.

:hacking run: /n./ [analogy with `bombing run' or `speed
run'] A hack session extended long outside normal working times,
especially one longer than 12 hours. May cause you to `change
phase the hard way' (see {phase}).

:Hacking X for Y: /n./ [ITS] Ritual phrasing of part of the
information which ITS made publicly available about each user.
This information (the INQUIR record) was a sort of form in which
the user could fill out various fields. On display, two of these
fields were always combined into a project description of the form
"Hacking X for Y" (e.g., `"Hacking perceptrons for
Minsky"'). This form of description became traditional and has
since been carried over to other systems with more general
facilities for self-advertisement (such as Unix {plan file}s).

:Hackintosh: /n./ 1. An Apple Lisa that has been hacked into
emulating a Macintosh (also called a `Mac XL'). 2. A Macintosh
assembled from parts theoretically belonging to different models in
the line.

:hackish: /hak'ish/ /adj./ (also {hackishness} n.) 1. Said
of something that is or involves a hack. 2. Of or pertaining to
hackers or the hacker subculture. See also {true-hacker}.

:hackishness: /n./ The quality of being or involving a hack.
This term is considered mildly silly. Syn. {hackitude}.

:hackitude: /n./ Syn. {hackishness}; this word is considered
sillier.

:hair: /n./ [back-formation from {hairy}] The complications
that make something hairy. "Decoding {TECO} commands requires
a certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase `infinite
hair', which connotes extreme complexity. Also in `hairiferous'
(tending to promote hair growth): "GNUMACS elisp encourages lusers
to write complex editing modes." "Yeah, it's pretty hairiferous
all right." (or just: "Hair squared!")

:hairball: /n./ [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a
store-and-forward network is failing to forward when it should.
Often used in the phrase "Fido coughed up a hairball today",
meaning that the stuck messages have just come unstuck, producing a
flood of mail where there had previously been drought.

:hairy: /adj./ 1. Annoyingly complicated. "{DWIM} is
incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "{DWIM} is
incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative,
rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in
context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to
worry about." See also {hirsute}.

A well-known result in topology called the Brouwer Fixed-Point
Theorem states that any continuous transformation of a surface into
itself has at least one fixed point. Mathematically literate
hackers tend to associate the term `hairy' with the informal
version of this theorem; "You can't comb a hairy ball smooth."

The adjective `long-haired' is well-attested to have been in
slang use among scientists and engineers during the early 1950s; it
was equivalent to modern `hairy' senses 1 and 2, and was very
likely ancestral to the hackish use. In fact the noun
`long-hair' was at the time used to describe a person satisfying
sense 3. Both senses probably passed out of use when long hair
was adopted as a signature trait by the 1960s counterculture,
leaving hackish `hairy' as a sort of stunted mutant relic.

:HAKMEM: /hak'mem/ /n./ MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A
legendary collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks
contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. (The title of the
memo really is "HAKMEM", which is a 6-letterism for `hacks
memo'.) Some of them are very useful techniques, powerful
theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the
category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling
of the entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased:

Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less
than 2^(18).

Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel): The most *probable* suit
distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared to 4-3-3-3,
which is the most *evenly* distributed. This is because the
world likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying
things will not be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state
of lowest disordered energy.

Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5
(that is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25
such that all rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same
number). There are about 320 million, not counting those that
differ only by rotation and reflection.

Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming
language is machine independent is easily exploded by computing the
sum of powers of 2. If the result loops with period = 1
with sign +, you are on a sign-magnitude machine. If the
result loops with period = 1 at -1, you are on a
twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater
than 1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement
machine. If the result loops with period greater than 1, not
including the beginning, your machine isn't binary -- the pattern
should tell you the base. If you run out of memory, you are on a
string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error,
some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine
independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine
dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more
precisely, algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =
...111111 (base 2). Now add X to itself:
X + X = ...111110. Thus, 2X = X - 1, so
X = -1. Therefore algebra is run on a machine (the
universe) that is two's-complement.

Item 174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only
number such that if you represent it on the {PDP-10} as both an
integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two
representations are identical.

Item 176 (Gosper): The "banana phenomenon" was encountered when
processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed
out, searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the
text, taking the letter following that occurrence, typing it out,
and iterating. This ensures that every 4-letter string output
occurs in the original. The program typed BANANANANANANANA.... We
note an ambiguity in the phrase, "the Nth occurrence of." In one
sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are
nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the
first ANA in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By
Murphy's Law, there is but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a
loop. An option to find overlapped instances would be useful,
although it would require backing up N - 1 characters before
seeking the next N-character string.

Note: This last item refers to a {Dissociated Press}
implementation. See also {banana problem}.

HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and
technical items, but these examples show some of its fun
flavor.

An HTML transcription of the document is available at
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.

:hakspek: /hak'speek/ /n./ A shorthand method of spelling
found on many British academic bulletin boards and {talker
system}s. Syllables and whole words in a sentence are replaced by
single ASCII characters the names of which are phonetically similar
or equivalent, while multiple letters are usually dropped. Hence,
`for' becomes `4'; `two', `too', and `to' become `2';
`ck' becomes `k'. "Before I see you tomorrow" becomes "b4 i
c u 2moro". First appeared in London about 1986, and was probably
caused by the slowness of available talker systems, which operated
on archaic machines with outdated operating systems and no standard
methods of communication. Has become rarer since. See also
{talk mode}.

:hammer: /vt./ Commonwealth hackish syn. for {bang on}.

:hamster: /n./ 1. [Fairchild] A particularly slick little piece
of code that does one thing well; a small, self-contained hack.
The image is of a hamster {happily} spinning its exercise wheel.
2. A tailless mouse; that is, one with an infrared link to a
receiver on the machine, as opposed to the conventional cable.
3. [UK] Any item of hardware made by Amstrad, a company famous for
its cheap plastic PC-almost-compatibles.

:hand cruft: /vt./ [pun on `hand craft'] See {cruft}, sense
3.

:hand-hacking: /n./ 1. The practice of translating {hot
spot}s from an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to
trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both
the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune},
{bum}, {by hand}; syn. with /v./ {cruft}. 2. More
generally, manual construction or patching of data sets that would
normally be generated by a translation utility and interpreted by
another program, and aren't really designed to be read or modified
by humans.

:hand-roll: /v./ [from obs. mainstream slang `hand-rolled' in
opposition to `ready-made', referring to cigarettes] To
perform a normally automated software installation or configuration
process {by hand}; implies that the normal process failed due to
bugs in the configurator or was defeated by something exceptional
in the local environment. "The worst thing about being a gateway
between four different nets is having to hand-roll a new sendmail
configuration every time any of them upgrades."

:handle: /n./ 1. [from CB slang] An electronic pseudonym; a
`nom de guerre' intended to conceal the user's true identity.
Network and BBS handles function as the same sort of simultaneous
concealment and display one finds on Citizen's Band radio, from
which the term was adopted. Use of grandiose handles is
characteristic of {warez d00dz}, {cracker}s, {weenie}s,
{spod}s, and other lower forms of network life; true hackers
travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry.
Compare {nick}. 2. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to
dynamically-allocated memory; the extra level of indirection allows
on-the-fly memory compaction (to cut down on fragmentation) or
aging out of unused resources, with minimal impact on the (possibly
multiple) parts of the larger program containing references to the
allocated memory. Compare {snap} (to snap a handle would defeat
its purpose); see also {aliasing bug}, {dangling
pointer}.

:handshaking: /n./ Hardware or software activity designed to
start or keep two machines or programs in synchronization as they
{do protocol}. Often applied to human activity; thus, a hacker
might watch two people in conversation nodding their heads to
indicate that they have heard each others' points and say "Oh,
they're handshaking!". See also {protocol}.

:handwave: [poss. from gestures characteristic of stage
magicians] 1. /v./ To gloss over a complex point; to distract a
listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with
blatantly faulty logic. 2. /n./ The act of handwaving. "Boy, what
a handwave!"

If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or
"Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that...", it is
a good bet he is about to handwave (alternatively, use of these
constructions in a sarcastic tone before a paraphrase of someone
else's argument suggests that it is a handwave). The theory behind
this term is that if you wave your hands at the right moment, the
listener may be sufficiently distracted to not notice that what you
have said is {bogus}. Failing that, if a listener does object,
you might try to dismiss the objection with a wave of your hand.

The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands
up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting
at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the
handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position
while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In
context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker
makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave
your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than
words could express, that his logic is faulty.

:hang: /v./ 1. To wait for an event that will never occur.
"The system is hanging because it can't read from the crashed
drive". See {wedged}, {hung}. 2. To wait for some event to
occur; to hang around until something happens. "The program
displays a menu and then hangs until you type a character."
Compare {block}. 3. To attach a peripheral device, esp. in
the construction `hang off': "We're going to hang another tape
drive off the file server." Implies a device attached with
cables, rather than something that is strictly inside the machine's
chassis.