gweep

/gweep/ [WPI] 1. v. To hack , usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards,
one who gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center
punching cards or crashing the PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent
who was there at the time opines that the term was originally onomatopoetic,
describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint terminals long connected to
the PDP-10; others allege that gweep was the sound of the Datapoint's bell
(compare feep ). The term has survived the demise of those technologies,
however, and was still alive in early 1999. I'm going to go gweep for a
while. See you in the morning. I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week.
2. n. One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a hacker. He's a hard-core
gweep, mumbles code in his sleep. Around 1979 this was considered derogatory
and not used in self-reference; it has since been proudly claimed in much
the same way as geek.

