2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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chawmp
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. [University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This term
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was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it is said to
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have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was coined in revolt
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against the promiscuous use of word for anything between 16 and 32 bits;
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word has an additional special meaning for FORTH hacks that made the
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overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gawbl/ (spelled gawble or
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possibly gawbul ) was in use as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full
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machine word, but our sources are unclear on this). These terms are more
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easily understood if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of
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chomp and gobble pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For
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general discussion of similar terms, see nybble.
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