hack
[very common] 1. n. Originally, a quick job that produces what
is needed, but not well. 2. n. An incredibly good, and perhaps
very time-consuming, piece of work that produces exactly what is
needed. 3. vt. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack
this heat!" 4. vt. To work on something (typically a program). In
an immediate sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In
a general (time-extended) sense: "What do you do around here?" "I
hack TECO." More generally, "I hack `foo'" is roughly equivalent
to "`foo' is my major interest (or project)". "I hack solid-state
physics." See Hacking X for
Y. 5. vt. To pull a prank on. See sense 2 and hacker (sense 5). 6. vi. To interact with a
computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed
way. "Whatcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 7. n. Short for hacker. 8. See nethack. 9. [MIT] v. To explore the basements,
roof ledges, and steam tunnels of a large, institutional
building, to the dismay of Physical Plant workers and (since this
is usually performed at educational institutions) the Campus
Police. This activity has been found to be eerily similar to
playing adventure games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Zork. See also vadding.
Constructions on this term abound. They include `happy
hacking' (a farewell), `how's hacking?' (a friendly greeting
among hackers) and `hack, hack' (a fairly content-free but
friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell). For more
on this totipotent term see "The Meaning of Hack". See
also neat hack, real hack.
Node:hack attack, Next:hack mode, Previous:hack, Up:= H
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hack attack n.
[poss. by analogy with `Big Mac Attack' from ads for the
McDonald's fast-food chain; the variant `big hack attack' is
reported] Nearly synonymous with hacking run, though the latter more
strongly implies an all-nighter.