chawmp

n. [University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This term
was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it is said to
have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was coined in revolt
against the promiscuous use of word for anything between 16 and 32 bits;
word has an additional special meaning for FORTH hacks that made the
overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gawbl/ (spelled gawble or
possibly gawbul ) was in use as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full
machine word, but our sources are unclear on this). These terms are more
easily understood if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of
chomp and gobble pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For
general discussion of similar terms, see nybble.

