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 grep for things
rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
generalizations of exactly this kind.
Hackers 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 versa). For example,
because
porous => porosity
generous => generosity
hackers happily generalize:
mysterious => mysteriosity
ferrous => ferrosity
obvious => obviosity
dubious => dubiosity
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:
win => winnitude (a common exclamation)
loss => lossitude
cruft => cruftitude
lame => lameitude
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 writing it all down." A
common use is "screenfull", meaning the amount of text that will
fit on one screen, usually in text mode where 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
aversion to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it
with contempt.
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:
win => winnitude, winnage
disgust => disgustitude
hack => hackification
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 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 VAXen
and 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 frobnitz) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather
than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see Unix, TWENEX in main
text). But note that `Twenexen' was never used, and `Unixen' was
not sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after
it might logically have come into use; 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', 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.
Node:Spoken
Inarticulations, Next:Anthropomorphization, Previous:Overgeneralization,
Up:Jargon
Construction