jargon-construction.tex

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 verb doubling, soundalike slang, the `--P' convention,
overgeneralization, spoken inarticulations, and anthropomorphization. Each is
discussed below. We also cover the standard comparitives for design quality.

Of these six, verb doubling, overgeneralization, anthropomorphization, and
(especially) spoken inarticulatinos have become quite general; but soundalike
slang is still alrgely confined to MIT and other large universities, and the
`--P' convention is found only where LISPers flourish.

\begin{itemize}
	\item\citeentry{Verb Doubling}: Doubling a verb may change its semantics
	\item\citeentry{Soundalike Slang}: Punning jargon
	\item\citeentry{The `--P' convention}: A LISPy way to form questions
	\item\citeentry{Overgeneralization}: Standard abuses of grammar
	\item\citeentry{Spoken Inarticulations}: Sighing and $<$*sigh$>$ing
	\item\citeentry{Anthropomorphization}: Homunculi, daemons, and confused
		programs
	\item\citeentry{Comparatives}: Standard comparatives for design quality
\end{itemize}


\section*{Verb Doubling}\label{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 \citeentry{win}, \citeentry{lose}, \citeentry{hack},
	\citeentry{flame}, \citeentry{barf}, \citeentry{chomp}:

	\begin{quote}
		``The disk heads just crashed.'' ``Lose, lose.''\\
		``Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame, flame.''\\
		``Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!''
	\end{quote}

	Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately
	obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.

	The \citeentry{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
	\worktitle{Muppet Show} reference); other infamous examples have included:

	\begin{quote}
		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\\
		alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill
	\end{quote}


\section*{Soundalike Slang}\label{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
	\citeentry{flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to include some other
	jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine \worktitle{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:

	\begin{quote}
		Boston Herald $\Rightarrow$ Horrid (or Harried)\\
		Boston Globe $\Rightarrow$ Boston Glob\\
		Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle $\Rightarrow$ the Crocknicle (or
			the Comical)\\
		New York Times $\Rightarrow$ New York Slime\\
		Wall Street Journal $\Rightarrow$ Wall Street Urinal
	\end{quote}

	However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the moment,
	Standard examples include:

	\begin{quote}
		Data General $\Rightarrow$ Dirty Genitals\\
		IBM 360 $\Rightarrow$ IBM Three-Sickly\\
		Government Property -- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) $\Rightarrow$
			Government Duplicity -- Do Not Propagate\\
		for historical reasons $\Rightarrow$ for hysterical raisins\\
		Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) $\Rightarrow$
			Marginal Hacks Hall\\
		Microsoft $\Rightarrow$ Microsloth\\
		Internet Explorer $\Rightarrow$ Internet Exploiter
	\end{quote}

	This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
	compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque whereas
	hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.


\section*{The `--P' convention}\label{The-P-convention}

	Turning a word into a question by appending the syllable `P'; from the LISP
	convention of appending the letter `P' to denote a predicate (a
	boolean-valued function). The question should expect a yes/no answer,
	though it needn't. (See \citeentry{T} and \citeentry{NIL}.)

	At dinnertime:

	\begin{quote}
		Q: ``Foodp?''

		A: ``Yeah, I'm pretty hungry.'' or ``T!''
	\end{quote}

	At any time:

	\begin{quote}
		Q: ``State-of-the-world-P?''

		A: (Straight) ``I'm about to go home.''

		A: (Humorous) ``Yes, the world has a state.''
	\end{quote}

	On the phone to Florida:

	\begin{quote}
		Q: ``State-p Florida?''

		A: ``Been reading JARGON.TXT again, eh?''
	\end{quote}

	[One of the best of these is a \citeentry{Gosperism}. Once, when we were at
	a chinese restaurant, Bill Gosper wanted to know whether someone would like
	to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soul. His inquiry was:
	``Split-p soup?'' -- GLS]

\section*{Overgeneralization}\label{Overgeneralization}

	A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which techspeak
	items such as names of program tools, command language primitives, and even
	assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever
	hackers find amusing analogies to them.  Thus (to cite one of the
	best-known examples) Unix hackers often \citeentry{grep} for things rather
	than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are generalizations of
	exactly this kind.

	Hackers often enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well.
	Many hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them
	to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform
	cases (or vice verse). For example, because

	\begin{quote}
		porous $\Rightarrow$ porosity\\
		generous $\Rightarrow$ generosity
	\end{quote}

	hackers happily generalize:

	\begin{quote}
		mysterious $\Rightarrow$ mysteriosity\\
		ferrous $\Rightarrow$ ferrosity\\
		obvious $\Rightarrow$ obviosity\\
		dubious $\Rightarrow$ dubiosity
	\end{quote}

	Another class of common construction uses the suffix `--itude' to abstract
	a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage arises
	especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the same
	abstraction through `--iness' or `--ingness'. Thus:

	\begin{quote}
		win $\Rightarrow$ winnitude (a common exclamation)\\
		loss $\Rightarrow$ lossitude\\
		cruft $\Rightarrow$ cruftitude\\
		lame $\Rightarrow$ lamitude
	\end{quote}

	Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for
	example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called
	`lats' -- after all, they're measuring latitude!

	Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: ``All nouns can be verbed'',
	``I'll mouse it up'',  ``Hang on while I clipboard it over'', ``I'm
	grepping the files''. English as a whole is already heading in this
	direction (towards pure-positional grammar like Chinese); hackers are
	simply a bit ahead of the curve.

	The suffix ``--full'' can also be applied in generalized and fanciful ways,
	as in ``As soon as you have more than one cachefull of data, the system
	starts thrashing,'' or ``As soon as I have more than one headfull of ideas,
	I start writign it all down.'' A common use is a ``screenfull'' meaning the
	amount of text that will fit in one screen, usually in text mode when you
	have no choice as to character size. Another common form is ``bufferfull''.

	However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
	characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon: a hacker
	would never, for example, `productize', `prioritize', or `securitize'
	things. Hackers have a strong aversino to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard
	those who use it with contempt. The terms for `free software' are an
	example -- `free software' is the original, most hackish term, and those
	who use it are a significant minority. It calls to mind freedom, and most
	who use it also use copyleft licenses, such as the GNU General Public
	License. ESR coined the term `open-source' in order to appeal to
	businesses, and those who use it are a majority of hackers and
	hacker-friendly (or at least hacker-saturated) businesses. The GNU GPL is
	popular here as well, but copycenter licenses are gaining in popularity.
	Then businesses coined the bureaucratic buzzword `crowdsourcing', in
	reference to outsourcing, and this is rare amongst hackers, at least when
	talking of software.

	Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
	overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form
	to mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:

	\begin{quote}
		win $\Rightarrow$ winnitude, winnage\\
		disgust $\Rightarrow$ disgustitude\\
		hack $\Rightarrow$ hackification
	\end{quote}

	Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms.
	Some of these go back quite a ways: the TMRC Dictionary includes an entry
	which implies that the plural of `mouse' is \citeentry{meeces}, and notes
	that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This latter has
	apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans
	(railroad enthusiasts) for many years.

	On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form
	plurals in `--xen' (see \citeentry{VAXen} and \citeentry{boxen} in the main
	text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this
	way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
	`frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see \citeentry{frobnitz}) and
	`Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see
	\citeentry{Unix}, \citeentry{TWENEX} in main text). But note that `Unixen'
	and `Twenexen' are never used; it has been suggested that this is because
	`--ix' and `--ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate
	plural.  Finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural
	of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.

	The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
	generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import
	or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `--im', or the Anglo-Saxon
	plural suffix `--en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply.

	This is not `poor grammar' (which is itself a somewhat barmy idea), as
	hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they
	distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness.
	It is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of
	clarity.

\section*{Spoken Inarticulations}\label{Spoken-Inarticulations}

	Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where
	their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that
	this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on a
	comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs, and IRC channels (interestingly, the
	same sorts of constructions have been showing up with increasing frequency
	in comic strips). Another expression sometimes heard is ``Complain!'',
	meaning ``I have a complaint!''

\section*{Anthropomorphization}\label{Anthropomorphization}

	Semantically, one rich source of jargon construction is the hackish
	tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. This isn't done in a
	naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling
	empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they work
	on every day are `alive'. What is common is to hear hardware or software
	talked about as though it has homunculi talking to each other inside it,
	with intentions and desires. Thus, one hears ``The protocol handler got
	confused'', or that programs ``are trying'' to do things, or one may say of
	a routine that ``its goal in life is to X''. One even hears explanations
	like``\dots and its poor little brain couldn't understand X, and it died.''
	Sometimes modelling things this way actually seems to make them easier to
	understand, perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything
	with a really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than
	`like a thing'.

\section*{Comparatives}\label{Comparatives}

	Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as
	members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives
	and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here
	is an approximately correct spectrum:

	\begin{quote}
		monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature\\
		crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection
	\end{quote}

	The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never
	actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the
	reliability of software:

	\begin{quote}
		broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle\\
		solid robust bulletproof armor-plated
	\end{quote}

	Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is rare
	in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers.

	Coinages for describing \citeentry{lossage} seem to call forth the very
	finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that
	hackers have even more words for equipment failure than Yiddish has for
	obnoxious people.