66 lines
7.4 KiB
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66 lines
7.4 KiB
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Overgeneralization</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="construction.html" title="Chapter 4. Jargon Construction"/><link rel="previous" href="p-convention.html" title="The -P Convention"/><link rel="next" href="inarticulations.html" title="Spoken inarticulations"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Overgeneralization</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="p-convention.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 4. Jargon Construction</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="inarticulations.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><div class="sect1" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="overgeneralization"/>Overgeneralization</h2></div></div><div/></div><p>A very conspicuous feature of jargon is the frequency with which
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techspeak items such as names of program tools, command language primitives,
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and even assembler opcodes are applied to contexts outside of computing
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wherever hackers find amusing analogies to them. Thus (to cite one of the
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best-known examples) Unix hackers often <a href="G/grep.html"><i class="glossterm">grep</i></a> for things
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rather than searching for them. Many of the lexicon entries are
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generalizations of exactly this kind.</p><p>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 →
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generosity, hackers happily generalize:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li><p>mysterious → mysteriosity</p></li><li><p>ferrous → ferrosity</p></li><li><p>obvious → obviosity</p></li><li><p>dubious → dubiosity</p></li></ul></div><p>Another class of common construction uses the suffix
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‘-itude’ to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or
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noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would
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perform the same abstraction through ‘-iness’ or
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‘-ingness’. Thus:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li><p>win → winnitude (a common exclamation)</p></li><li><p>loss → lossitude</p></li><li><p>cruft → cruftitude</p></li><li><p>lame → lameitude</p></li></ul></div><p>Some hackers cheerfully reverse this transformation; they argue, for
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example, that the horizontal degree lines on a globe ought to be called
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‘lats’ — after all, they're measuring latitude! </p><p>Also, note that all nouns can be verbed. E.g.: “<span class="quote">All nouns can be
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verbed</span>”, “<span class="quote">I'll mouse it up</span>”, “<span class="quote">Hang on while I
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clipboard it over</span>”, “<span class="quote">I'm grepping the files</span>”. English as
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a whole is already heading in this direction (towards pure-positional grammar
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like Chinese); hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.</p><p>The suffix “<span class="quote">-full</span>” can also be applied in generalized and
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fanciful ways, as in “<span class="quote">As soon as you have more than one cachefull of
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data, the system starts thrashing,</span>” or “<span class="quote">As soon as I have more
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than one headfull of ideas, I start writing it all down.</span>” A common use
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is “<span class="quote">screenfull</span>”, meaning the amount of text that will fit on one
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screen, usually in text mode where you have no choice as to character
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size. Another common form is “<span class="quote">bufferfull</span>”.</p><p>However, hackers avoid the unimaginative verb-making techniques
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characteristic of marketroids, bean-counters, and the Pentagon; a hacker would
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never, for example, ‘productize’, ‘prioritize’, or
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‘securitize’ things. Hackers have a strong aversion to
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bureaucratic bafflegab and regard those who use it with contempt.</p><p>Similarly, all verbs can be nouned. This is only a slight
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overgeneralization in modern English; in hackish, however, it is good form to
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mark them in some standard nonstandard way. Thus:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li><p>win → winnitude, winnage</p></li><li><p>disgust → disgustitude</p></li><li><p>hack → hackification</p></li></ul></div><p>Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural
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forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary includes an
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entry which implies that the plural of ‘mouse’ is
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<a href="M/meeces.html"><i class="glossterm">meeces</i></a>, and notes that the defined plural of
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‘caboose’ is ‘cabeese’. This latter has apparently
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been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans (railroad
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enthusiasts) for many years</p><p>On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in
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‘x’ may form plurals in ‘-xen’ (see
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<a href="V/VAXen.html"><i class="glossterm">VAXen</i></a> and <a href="B/boxen.html"><i class="glossterm">boxen</i></a> in the main
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text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this
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way; e.g., ‘soxen’ for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
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the Hebrew-style ‘frobbotzim’ for the plural of
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‘frobbozz’ (see <a href="F/frobnitz.html"><i class="glossterm">frobnitz</i></a>) and
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‘Unices’ and ‘Twenices’ (rather than
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‘Unixes’ and ‘Twenexes’; see
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<a href="U/Unix.html"><i class="glossterm">Unix</i></a>, <a href="T/TWENEX.html"><i class="glossterm">TWENEX</i></a> in main text). But
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note that ‘Twenexen’ was never used, and ‘Unixen’ was
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seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after it might
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logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this is because
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‘-ix’ and ‘-ex’ are Latin singular endings that
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attract a Latinate plural. Among Perl hackers it is reported that
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‘comma’ and ‘semicolon’ pluralize as
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‘commata’ and ‘semicola’ respectively. Finally, it
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has been suggested to general approval that the plural of
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‘mongoose’ ought to be ‘polygoose’.</p><p>The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
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generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or
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a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending ‘-im’, or the
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Anglo-Saxon plural suffix ‘-en’) to cases where it isn't normally
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considered to apply.</p><p>This is not ‘poor grammar’, as hackers are generally quite
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well aware of what they are doing when they distort the language. It is
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grammatical creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but
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to amuse, and never at the expense of clarity.</p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="p-convention.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="construction.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="inarticulations.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">The -P Convention </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Spoken inarticulations</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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