runes pl.n.
1. Anything that requires heavy
wizardry or black art
to parse: core dumps, JCL commands,
APL, or code in a language you haven't a clue how to read. Not
quite as bad as line noise,
but close. Compare casting
the runes, Great
Runes. 2. Special display characters (for example, the
high-half graphics on an IBM PC). 3. [borderline techspeak]
16-bit characters from the Unicode multilingual character
set.
Node:runic, Next:rusty iron, Previous:runes, Up:= R
=
runic adj.
Syn. obscure. VMS fans sometimes
refer to Unix as `Runix'; Unix fans return the compliment by
expanding VMS to `Very Messy Syntax' or `Vachement Mauvais
Système' (French idiom, "Hugely Bad System").