feep

/feep/ 1. n. The soft electronic bell sound of a display terminal (except
for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to prefer beep
). 2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original
TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms:
beep , bleep , or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly,
in his comic strip Shoe , uses the word eep for sounds made by computer
terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation
yet.) The term breedle was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal
bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical
equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine
the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five seconds). The
feeper on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping
its gears. See also ding.

