The New Hacker's Dictionary

Welcome to The Hacker's Dictionary, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.

#======= THIS IS JARGON FILE, VERSION 4.3.0, 30 APR 2001 =======#

The Hacker's Dictionary is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors include:

Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.com

All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file.

This document (The Hacker's Dictionary) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Hacker's Dictionary 4.3.0" or "The on-line Hacker's Dictionary, version 4.3.0, 30 APR 2001".)