65 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
65 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
Overgeneralization
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A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which techspeak
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items such as names of program tools, command language primitives, and even
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assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing wherever
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hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the best-known
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examples) Unix hackers often grep for things rather than searching for them.
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Many of the lexicon entries are generalizations of exactly this kind.
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Hackers enjoy overgeneralization on the grammatical level as well. Many
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hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make
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nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases (or
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vice versa). For example, because porous porosity and generous generosity,
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hackers happily generalize: mysterious mysteriosity ferrous ferrosity
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obvious obviosity dubious dubiosity Another class of common construction
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uses the suffix -itude to abstract a quality from just about any adjective
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or noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English
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would perform the same abstraction through -iness or -ingness. Thus: win
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winnitude (a common exclamation) loss lossitude cruft cruftitude lame
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lameitude Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue,
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for example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called
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lats after all, they're measuring latitude! Also, note that all nouns can
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be verbed. E.g.: All nouns can be verbed , I'll mouse it up , Hang on
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while I clipboard it over , I'm grepping the files . English as a whole is
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already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar like
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Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve. The suffix -full
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can also be applied in generalized and fanciful ways, as in As soon as you
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have more than one cachefull of data, the system starts thrashing, or As
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soon as I have more than one headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down.
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A common use is screenfull , meaning the amount of text that will fit on
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one screen, usually in text mode where you have no choice as to character
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size. Another common form is bufferfull . However, hackers avoid the
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unimaginative verb-making techniques characteristic of marketroids,
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bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker would never, for example,
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productize, prioritize, or securitize things. Hackers have a strong aversion
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to bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.
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Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight overgeneralization
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in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form to mark them in some
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standard nonstandard way. Thus: win winnitude, winnage disgust
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disgustitude hack hackification Further, note the prevalence of certain
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kinds of nonstandard plural forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the
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TMRC Dictionary includes an entry which implies that the plural of mouse is
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meeces , and notes that the defined plural of caboose is cabeese. This
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latter has apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among
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railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years On a similarly Anglo-Saxon
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note, almost anything ending in x may form plurals in -xen (see VAXen and
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boxen in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are
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sometimes treated this way; e.g., soxen for a bunch of socks. Other funny
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plurals are the Hebrew-style frobbotzim for the plural of frobbozz (see
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frobnitz ) and Unices and Twenices (rather than Unixes and Twenexes; see
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Unix , TWENEX in main text). But note that Twenexen was never used, and
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Unixen was seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years
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after it might logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this
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is because -ix and -ex are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate
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plural. Among Perl hackers it is reported that comma and semicolon pluralize
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as commata and semicola respectively. Finally, it has been suggested to
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general approval that the plural of mongoose ought to be polygoose. The
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pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of
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an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or a fossil (such
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as the Hebrew plural ending -im, or the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix -en) to
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cases where it isn't normally considered to apply. This is not poor grammar,
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as hackers are generally quite well aware of what they are doing when they
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distort the language. It is grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness.
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It is done not to impress but to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.
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