1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often
said of the system (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk
drives (the term originally described what happens when the air
gap of a hard disk collapses). "Three lusers lost their
files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash that involves the
read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and
scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a `head crash',
whereas the term `system crash' usually, though not always,
implies that the operating system or other software was at fault.
2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?"
"Something crashed the OS!" See down. Also used
transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person
or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing SPACEWAR
crashed the system." 3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the
sack after a long hacking run; see gronk out.
