Hacker jargon as spoken in
English outside the U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It
is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce
truncations like `char' and `soc', etc., as spelled (/char/,
/sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in
newsgroup names (especially two-component names) tend to be
pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather
than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix meta may be pronounced
/mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/,
zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred
metasyntactic variables include blurgle, e
ook, frodo, and bilbo; wibble,
wobble, and in emergencies wubble; flob,
banana, tom, dick, harry,
wombat, frog, fish, womble and so on and on
(see foo, sense 4).
Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama',
`frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples: "barf
city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note
that the American terms `parens', `brackets', and `braces' for (),
[], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers
`brackets', `square brackets', and `curly brackets'. Also, the
use of `pling' for bang is common outside the United States.
See also attoparsec, calculator, chem
console jockey, fish, go-
grunge, hakspek, heavy metal,
lord high fixer, loose bytes,
noddy, psychedelicware, plingnet
terminal junkie, tick-list features,
weasel, YABA, and notes or definitions under
cosmic rays, crippleware, crunch
gonk, hamster, hardwarily,
nybble, proglet, root,
womble, and xyzzy.
