Friday, August 8, 2008

Geeks are great language users

There is surely a better title for this post, but it's late... I wanted to celebrate the wonderful language that geeks come up with. For those not in the know who think that geeks are all pasty faced young men who can barely articulate a sentance, you would be completely wrong - on the last count at least. No TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), that is the province of middle management. I'm going to start listing my favorite phrases here as I come across them, are all wonderfully visual and usually give a sense of their meaning, even to the uninitiated.

A bug - probably the first geek term. The urban myth says and early valve computer when wrong when an insect cause a connection to blow.
Easter Egg feature - a hidden feature only accessible to those in the know.
A pigeon/pidgin language - heard it in an otherwise impenetrable podcast on computing.
Meercating - as in your in an open plan office with shoulder level partitions and you hear a comotion. Everyone started meercating.

Do contribute your own...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you saying 'pidgin' is a term of geek origin?
If so, what do you mean by 'geek'?

Pidgin has been in usage since late 1800s.. perhaps it's a particular nuance of the word that is geeky in origin? This isn't clear from your post?

Phoebe Bright said...

I was refering to pidgin computer languages - so a reuse of the term.

Phoebe Bright said...

keeping things DRY - where DRY is Don't Repeat Yourself.