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This is the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely
used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal
restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about
its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached.
Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File,
ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time.
(Examples of appropriate citation form: "Jargon File 4.0.0" or
"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996".)
The Jargon File is a common heritage of the hacker culture.
Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable
time to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large
as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate
contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating
information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a
consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versions
periodically. Current volunteer editors include:
Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.com
Although there is no requirement that you do so, it is considered good
form to check with an editor before quoting the File in a published work
or commercial product. We may have additional information that would be
helpful to you and can assist you in framing your quote to reflect
not only the letter of the File but its spirit as well.
All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer
editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise
labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this
public-domain file.
From time to time a snapshot of this file has been polished, edited,
and formatted for commercial publication with the cooperation of the
volunteer editors and the hacker community at large. If you wish to
have a bound paper copy of this file, you may find it convenient to
purchase one of these. They often contain additional material not
found in on-line versions. The two `authorized' editions so far are
described in the Revision History section; there may be more in the
future.
We invite people to send us URLs for resources (such as documents, FTP
locations, mailing-list addresses, etc.) relevant to Jargon File
entries.
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is
included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;
what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for
fun, social communication, and technical debate.
The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths,
heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because
hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define
themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits,
it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional
culture less than 40 years old.
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
their culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each other's
places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences.
Also as usual, not knowing the slang (or using it
inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of
all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a suit. All human
cultures use slang in this threefold way -- as a tool of
communication, and of inclusion, and of exclusion.
Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps
in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard
to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are
code for shared states of consciousness. There is a whole
range of altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to
high-level hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic
reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's
`trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and
hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a
simple example, take the distinction between a kluge and an
elegant solution, and the differing connotations attached to each.
The distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches
right back into the nature of the generative processes in program
design and asserts something important about two different kinds of
relationship between the hacker and the hack. Hacker slang is
unusually rich in implications of this kind, of overtones and
undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.
But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very
conscious and inventive in their use of language. These traits seem
to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine
we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of
most of us before adolescence. Thus, linguistic invention in most
subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious
process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a
game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus
display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of
language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful
intelligence. Further, the electronic media which knit them together
are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination
of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated
specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely
intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.
Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions. For example, it has recently become
fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context'
communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context level
of their languages and art forms. It is usually claimed that
low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and
completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures
which value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by
contrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive,
nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures
which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition. What
then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely
low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily
"low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context
slang style?
The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a
compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the
surrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest version
of an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained by
hackers themselves for over 15 years. This one (like its ancestors)
is primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries which collect
background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would be
awkward to try to subsume under individual slang definitions.
Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that
the material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should
find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is
amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use
humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements
about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of
opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this
is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these
disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that everyone's
sacred cows get gored, impartially. Compromise is not particularly a
hackish virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints
is.
The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt
it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences
--- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefit
from them.
A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in
Appendix A, Hacker Folklore. The `outside' reader's attention is
particularly directed to Appendix B, A Portrait of J. Random Hacker.
Appendix C, the Bibliography, lists some non-technical works which have
either influenced or described the hacker culture.
Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred. Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central
role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to
successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one
will do likewise.
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