24 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
24 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>flame</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="../F.html" title="F"/><link rel="previous" href="flamage.html" title="flamage"/><link rel="next" href="flame-bait.html" title="flame bait"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">flame</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="flamage.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">F</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="flame-bait.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="flame"/><dt xmlns="" id="flame"><b>flame</b></dt></dt><dd><p> [at MIT, orig. from the phrase <span class="firstterm">flaming
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asshole</span>]</p></dd><dd><p> 1. <span class="grammar">vi.</span> To post an email message
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intended to insult and provoke.</p></dd><dd><p> 2. <span class="grammar">vi.</span> To speak incessantly
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and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently
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ridiculous attitude.</p></dd><dd><p> 3. <span class="grammar">vt.</span> Either of senses 1 or 2,
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directed with hostility at a particular person or people. </p></dd><dd><p> 4. <span class="grammar">n.</span> An instance of flaming.
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When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the
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participants “<span class="quote">Now you're just flaming</span>” or “<span class="quote">Stop all that
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flamage!</span>” to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).</p></dd><dd><p>The term may have been independently invented at several different
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places. It has been reported from MIT, Carleton College and RPI (among
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many other places) from as far back as 1969, and from the University of
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Virginia in the early 1960s.</p><p>It is possible that the hackish sense of ‘flame’ is much
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older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker
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in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced
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computing device of the day. In Chaucer's <i class="citetitle">Troilus and
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Cressida</i>, Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of
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a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that
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it's called “<span class="quote">the fleminge of wrecches.</span>” This phrase seems to
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have been intended in context as “<span class="quote">that which puts the wretches to
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flight</span>” but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as
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“<span class="quote">the flaming of wretches</span>” would be today. One suspects that
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Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="flamage.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../F.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="flame-bait.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">flamage </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> flame bait</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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