The American Dialect Society

Among the New Words

Author(s): John Algeo and Adele Algeo
Source: American Speech, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Winter, 1994), pp. 398-410
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/455857 .
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
JOHN
ALGEO ADELE ALGEO
University of Georgia Athens, Georgia
With the assistance of the New Words Committee
T HE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
(our
New Word of the Year
1993)
is
being
traveled
increasingly, although
under a
variety
of new and
shorter names. We devote this issue
primarily
to
computer
and network
terms related to it. Useful
specialized glossaries
for such terms are The New
Hacker's
Dictionary,
2nd edition, by
Eric S.
Raymond (Cambridge,
MA: MIT
P, 1993),
and
Jargon:
An
Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms, by
Robin
Williams
(Berkeley,
CA:
Peachpit, 1993).
Internet users are
prolific
in
coining
new
jargon;
with the
increasing popularity
of Internet, much of
this
jargon
is
spilling
over into mainstream use and thus becomes
game
for
our chase.
Cyber
is
especially noteworthy
as a
voguish prefix.
Our dictionaries of
record include a few
cyber terms, such as
cyberpunk
and
cyberspace.
We
recorded several others
(cybergasm, cybersex,
cybertag)
in the installment for
Summer 1994. Here we enter the
prefix
with
many examples.
It is
spelled
solid with the
following stem,
or
hyphenated,
or with a
space,
the last
suggesting
that it is on its
way
to
being regarded
as a
separate
word.
We should
perhaps
have a
category
of "almost new words" for those that
are entered in one or two of our dictionaries of
record,
but not in most. An
example
is e-mail as a verb,
which is entered in the American
Heritage College
Dictionary,
but not others.
(Incidentally,
all dictionaries that enter the noun
e-mail have a short
entry,
cross-referenced to the full form electronic
mail;
that makes sense
etymologically,
but does not reflect current use since the
short form seems
dominant.)
Another "almost new word" is
Big Crunch, the
opposite
of the
cosmological Big Bang,
which is entered in the second
edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary
and is
increasingly frequent
as
evidence mounts for the existence of
enough
dark matter to reverse the
expansion
of the universe. And
yet
another is the
expression
be
history
in the
sense 'to be
gone
or finished' as in
'Just
two more
days
and this sale is
history"
or "He's on the
payroll
till the end of the month,
but he's
history."
American
Heritage
and Webster's New World come close to this use with a
definition of
history
as
"something
that
belongs
to the
past,"
but Merriam
Webster's
Collegiate
nails it with "one that is finished or done for."
The Barnhart New-Words Concordance
by
David K. Barnhart
(Cold Spring,
NY: Lexik
House, 1994)
is a useful index to ten sources
listing
new
words,
including
Fifty
Years
Among
the New Words and later installments of
"Among
398
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
the New Words." It is cited under the abbreviation BNWC in the
etymolo-
gies
of our entries.
Jane Appleby
Flint
points
out a
voguish expression:
"Is that a
great
,
or what!" Does
anyone
know its
origin?
Citations in this installment were
provided by
the
following:
Catherine
M.
Algeo,
Thomas J. Algeo,
L. R. N.
Ashley,
Ronald R. Butters, George
S.
Cole, ThomasJ. Creswell, Steve A.
Demakopoulos, Ludwig Deringer,
Gaelan
T. de Wolf, Raymond
GozziJr., WilliamJ. Kirwin, Donald M. Lance, Anton
Lysy, James
B. McMillan,
Michael
Montgomery,
Frank Nuessel, Louis
Phillips,
Charles D. Poe, Linda
Rapp, Randy Roberts, James
C. Stalker,
Russell Tabbert, and Robert S. Wachal.
In addition, the
following persons
contributed citations to our files
during
the
past year:
Michael E.
Agnes,
Richard W.
Bailey,
Kathleen R.
Binns, Elizabeth T. Blount, Henry
G.
Burger,
Edward
Callary,
Frederic G.
Cassidy, Sylvia Chalker, Daniel M. Crowl, Charles
Clay Doyle,
Connie C.
Eble, Eden Force Eskin, Sidney
Greenbaum, Frederick S. Holton, Jaan
Ingle, Betty J. Irwin, Albert E. Krahn, Joan
S.
LeMosy,
Robert
Longshore,
Donald
McCreary, Virginia
G. McDavid, Jeffrey McQuain,
Allan Metcalf,
William
Metzger,
Miriam
Meyers,
Donka Minkova, Victoria Neufeldt, Allyn
Partin,
Alicia
Patton, Greg Pulliam, Sean Romer,
Anne B. Russell, Luanne
von Schneidemesser, Alan Slotkin,
Thomas M.
Stephens,
Laurent Thomin,
Gregory
Williams,
Gordon R.
Wood,
and Susan
Wright.
We are
grateful
for the
help
of all the friends of
"Among
the New
Words,"
and if we have overlooked
anyone, please
let us know.
big
iron, Big
Iron n
[New Hacker's; BNWC;
R A
Spears, Contemporary
American
Slang (Lincolnwood,
IL: National Textbook, 1991)]
Mainframe
(computer)
known for its
power
1990
Apr
9
InfoWorld 54/4
Whenever a
big computer
company
known
by
a short
acronym
starts
talking
about a new
strategy, you
know that first and foremost it'll be aimed at
locking
customers into their
big
iron. 1991 Oct 21
InfoWorld
46/1 Already
the
computer industry press
has
documented the demise of
big
iron
computers
in
companies
of all sizes. ...
[?]
Somebody
needs to tell
corporate
MIS. ...
Especially
when user
activity
is
clocking
80
percent
time on PCs and
only
20
percent
on the
big
iron. 1992
Sep
28 PC Week
83/1
But have
you priced big
iron and telecommunications
equip-
ment
lately?
1994
May
15
Chicago
Tribune sec 7
5/4 This shift
away
from
big-
iron mainframes to the
desktop
client-server model of office
computing
is well
known to readers of the business
pages. Jun
6 Newsweek 49/1
For those not
up
on their
jargon,
that's shorthand for a '90s vision of information
management:
switching
from
Big
Iron to flexible networks of
personal computers
and worksta-
tions.
bozo filter n
Computer program
that identifies e-mail from unknown senders
and archives it to
keep
an E-MAILBOX uncluttered;
cf TWIT FILTER 1994 Jun 22
Wall StreetJourA10/1
Microsoft's Mr.
[William] Gates,
an unabashed e-mailer,
399
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AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
used
special
software-a "bozo filter" in
cyber-slang-that
culls mail from
strang-
ers and sends it into an electronic archive, where the mail sits unless he searches
for it.
burn in vt
[New Hacker's cf burn-in
period]
To test
(computer software)
for
freedom from defects 1990
Jan Computer Buyer's
Guide and Handbook 190/3
When the software arrives, you
should "burn it in." Boot it
up
on
your computer
and check to make sure that it "talks" to
your printer.
Make sure
you
can save
and retrieve data as
you expect.
If the disks are defective, you'll
know almost
immediately.
burn-in attrib
[Jargon; BNWC] Permanently recording
closed
captions
on a
video
tape
made from a television broadcast 1992 Oct 10 Detroit News D5/2 A
burn-in
option ($150)
allows the closed
captions
to be recorded
permanently
in
view on a
tape. Tapes
made while this
option
is turned on can be
played
on
any
VCR, and the on-screen
dialogue
will
always
be visible.
chat
group
n A number of Internet users who communicate with one another
simultaneously
1994
Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D10/1 [Jane
Bryant Quinn] Join
a chat
group.
Chats are conducted in "real time," meaning
that all the
participants
are on line at
once-asking
and
answering questions,
interjecting opinions, sharing
discoveries.
client/server, client-server attrib
Consisting
of
many
small
computers
linked
together
to share tasks 1994 Feb 14
InfoWorld 100/1
If the
digital
superhigh-
way
is
going
to
work,
it will have to be a series of client/server networks that
work
together seamlessly. May
15
Chicago
Tribune sec 7
5/4 It is
particularly
well known to those readers of the business
pages
who
bought
their IBM stock at
$100 a share, where it was
trading
when the anti-mainframe client-server trend
set in with a
vengeance
two
years ago. Jun
6 Newsweek 49/1 Technocrats call it
"client-server"-myriad
little
computers busily swapping
data and
divvying up
corporate
chores that central mainframes used to
perform.
cyber; cyb prefix [cyber(netics);
BNWC enters a number of
combinations]
Pertaining
to
computers,
electronic communication, or the electronic
super-
highway
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 38/1 Cyberis
used to indicate
the
de-territorializing
effects of the electronic feudal
age.
-cyberbabe
1992
Mar 9 Houston Chronicle D6 This is of the
genre
of science-fiction known as
"cyberpunk,"
in which
protagonists
lose themselves inside the universe of
computers, having cybersex
with
cyberbabes
and
cybercigarettes
afterward.
-cyberboard
1994
Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D10/4 [Jane
Bryant Quinn]
...
Vanguard spokesman
and
cyberboard [electronic bulletin
board] junkie
Brian Mattes.
-cyberboor
1994
Jun
19 NY Times
Magazine
[William Safire] It's
computer
communications
courtesy,
andJudith Martin-
Miss Manners-had better do a column on it before some
cyberboor
flames her
out.
-cybercad
1993
Jul
12 Atlanta Constitution B2/5
"I don't think he's
anything
more than I've called him, which is a
cybercad." -cyber-
camper
1994
Jan
17 Newsweek 38/4 But
delays
in 3DO software
development
made rivals
Sega
and Nintendo
happy cyber-campers
at the end of the
year.
-cyber-capitalism
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 38/1-2 The
major
political, economic, and social
problem
of our times is the
globalization
of
consumer culture and the
spread
of a certain kind of trans-national
"cyber-
capitalism"
which is
taking place through
electronic
digital
communications ...
controlled
by
interlocked
executives, corporations
and their client nations,
400
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
military establishments, and
strategic
inter-alliances.
-cybercapitalist
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 37/1 In such
places,
there is not much which
interests the information
cybercapitalists.
-cybercast
1994
Apr
18
InfoWorld
61/1 At Networld +
Interop (May 2-6, Las
Vegas),
the Internet Showcase will
include a live broadcast link
expected
to reach 30 million Internet users in 140
countries. The
cyberstation
is
supposed
to demonstrate the
convergence
of
voice, text, sound, and
image technologies
on the net. The
organizers
of the
cyberstation
call this a
cybercast-much
like a radio or TV broadcast.
-cyber-
chat 1994
Jan
17 Newsweek 38/3 Other offbeat features include
regular
re-
ports
from the Net, such as translations of the
acronyms
that
punctuate cyberchat.
Ibid 58/3 Agents
can also monitor weather
reports
at favorite resorts or scan
electronic forums run
by
on-line services to see if there's
any cyberchat you
might
find
interesting.
-cybercigarette
1992 Mar 9 Houston Chronicle D6
Quot
sv CYBERBABE
-cyber-community
1994 Mar
WordPerfectfor
Windows
Maga-
zine98/2
QUotsvLURK -cyber-companion
1994Jun 5
Chicago
Tribune sec 1
1/2 "I'm not
always happy,
but better than I used to be," says [Eric] Sawler, a
shy
man who
speaks slowly
and
sparingly
but whom
cyber-companions
have come to
know as an amateur author of science fiction and a lover of music.
-cyber-
cop
1994 Mar
WordPerfect
for Windows
Magazine 98/2
Quot
sv CYBERHILL Mar
14 Newsweek 38/1-2 It also
points up
an
unsettling development,
at least for the
cybercops.
For
years, government
has monitored citizens'
private
conversations
and transactions. ... But those
listening capabilities
are
eroding.
-cyber-
cowboy
1993 Nov 22 Time 30/2-3 Similarly,
he thinks, cybercowboys
will ride
the information
superhighway,
not
working regularly
for
anybody
but contract-
ing
with one
corporation
after another to do a
specific,
limited
job. -cyber-
creature 1993 Feb 22 Time 63/2 Computer
simulations of life, the best-known
application
of the
[complexity] theory,
create onscreen worlds of
cyber-crea-
tures that evolve in
ways
that
eerily parallel
real life.
--cybeix9ime, cyber-
crime 1993
Jun
7 Newsweek 70/2 The FBI can't
keep up
with all the
cybercrime. Jul
5 Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cybercrime: Cracking
secret
codes for
computers,
cellular
phones,
etc. 1994 Mar 14 US News & World
Report
71/2 To combat such
cyber-crimes,
the FBI drafted
eight agents
with
widely
varying backgrounds
in
computer technology. Jun
13 Newsweek
60/3
With
cybercrime
on the rise, the Clinton administration has been
pushing
manufac-
turers to install the
Clipper chip
in
phones, personal computers
and modems so
transmissions can be decoded.
-cybercrud
1993 Eric
Raymond
New Hacker's
Dictionary
129
cybercrud
...
Obfuscatory
tech-talk.
-cyberculture,
cyber
cul-
ture 1988 New Words and a
Changing
American Culture
[draft, Raymond
Gozzi
Jr] Many
names have been
suggested
for the new
society
that was seen
emerging
in this
period.
Technetronic
society (shaped by
advances in
technology
and
communications), cyberculture (served by cybernated industry),
the infor-
mation
society,
a service
economy,
a media
society,
are all terms which
capture
some
aspects
of the
changes.
1992 Dec 26 Columbia SC State
D3/5-6 [San
Francisco Chronicle] Cyber culture, says Rucker, is
basically
"this alliance between
people
and machines." 1994
Jan
18 Atlanta Constitution
C3/4 Quot
sv CYBER-
NEWS
-cyberdlance 1994May21
Atlanta ConstitutionB12/1
The most talked-
about
couple
of the
night-a
female dancer
pirouetting
with a
screen-projected
animated
figure
... in "Non
Sequitur"-was
an
intriguing special
effect. But
dance-wise, the duet was
problematic. [?]
Like
cybersex,
cyberdancejust
isn't as
401
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AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
satisfying
as the real
thing. -cyberenthusiast
1994
Apr
U. The National Col-
lege
Magazine 3/1 [U-Mail]
I am a fellow
cyberenthusiast
who
"jumped
on the
bandwagon"
a little over a
year ago.
-cyberfake
1994 Feb 20 NY Times sec 9
p
1
[head
&
subhead] Cyberfakes / The latest in knock-offs:
computer-made
counterfeits [fake designer labels]. -cyberfare
1994 Mar 28 Newsweek 38/3
People may
be
flocking
on line, but
they're
not
always finding
what
they
want....
Critics
say
most
cyberfare
lacks
depth
and interest.
-cyberfeelie
1993Jul 12
Atlanta Constitution B2/3 'This is not normal
courtship behavior," Reva wrote.
"Nor is it the casual, thoughtless
conduct of a
guy
out to see how
many
cyberfeelies
he can
grab."
-cyber
fender-bender 1994 Feb 21
People 40/2
No sooner had the
challenge
been issued than each knew their
meeting
was
more than
just
a
cyber fender-bender: It was, as
they say,
love at first
byte.
-cyberfiction
1994
Apr
5
Chicago
Tribune sec 5 2/1 "Hackers were
having
lots
of conversations about smart
drinks,"
he said, "and it was
showing up
in
cyberfiction." -cyberfox
1994 Feb 21
People
43/2 HER: ... Oh, I know
your
type.
All
you
want is some
quick
hot chat, then off
you'll go
with
your
hacker
pals
swapping
tales over all the
cyberfoxes you've
had and the size of
your
data
compression utility
software.
-cyberfreak
1994
Jan 24 Newsweek 6/4 More
than 2,000
cyberfreaks, moguls
and academics
packed
into UCLA's
Royce
Hall
last week to hear Vice President Al Gore and other
superstars
of the Information
Superhighway. -cyberfriend
1994Jun
6 Newsweek 16/2 [Mail Call] Awoman
who
recognized
herself and a
cyberfriend
told us, "He wants to have his
computer
do this, that and the other. I
[just]
want a word
processor."
--cyber-
front 1994
May
2 Time 49/1 A few tales from the
cyberfront: [accounts of the
theft of
computer chips]. -Cybergate
1994 Mar 21 Wall Street
Jour R14/1
The intended effect was to immerse riders in a three-dimensional video
game
called
Cybergate,
where
they
would battle one another for control of the last
remaining
inhabitable
planet
in the universe.
-cyberguru
1992 Dec 26
Columbia SC State Dl [San Francisco Chronicle] It [Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to
the New
Edge]
was the brain hurricane of a
couple
of kamikaze
cybergurus,
R. U.
Sirius and
Queen
Mu ... zonked on the techno-rad surf that has
replaced older,
staler ideas of civilization.
---cyberhick
1994Jun
12 Atlanta Constitution H5/1
"Your Net address
says
volumes about who
you are, about what
community you
hang in, and whether
you're
a
cybersnob
or a
cyberhick,"
said Paul Saffo, a
director of the Institute for the Future, a research
organization
in Menlo Park,
Calif.
-cyberhill
1994 Mar
WordPerfect
for Windows
Magazine 98/2 So when
you
hit the
on-ramp
to the information
highway,
remember
your
manners. You
never know when there
might
be a
cypercop [sic] over the next
cyberhill.
-cyberhippie
1991
Aug
19 Newsweek 61/1 Together
with the
plain
brown
paper
Whole Earth Review-the
magazine
for
cyberhippies-Mondo
is
filling
a
niche. One San Francisco critic calls it the
Rolling
Stone of the '90s.
-cyberhorse 1994
Apr
U. The National
College Magazine 3/1
[U-Mail,
head &
letter] Get off
your cyberhorse / I am
writing
to address a letter to the editor
written
by John
Patrick in the
January/February
issue of U.
Magazine.
-cyberhype
1994 Jun 6 Newsweek 16/1-2 [letter to ed] While I was excited
about
cruising
the Infobahn, I was afraid
cyberspace
would turn out to be
nothing
more than
cyberhype.
-cyberkid
1994
May
12
Chicago
Tribune sec 5
3/2 Ten
years ago
no one had heard of Nintendo of America, but now the
company
is a household
word, especially
if
your
household has a
cyberkid
or
402
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
two.
-cyberland
1993 Dec 6 US News & World
Report 71/3 Most
people
are
likely
to
prefer
a
graphics-based
entree into
cyberland.
-cyberlawyer
1994
Jan
17 Newsweek 58/3 Security
codes are also
programmed
in to
guard privacy.
(And
if
they're captured by
a federal
agent,
will
they
have to remember to
give
only
their name and rank before
calling
their
cyberlawyer?) -cyber-
lifestyle
1991
Aug
19 Newsweek 61/1 The first three issues of the slick
quarterly
[Mondo] roamed across
cyber-lifestyle,
with articles that
ranged
from artificial
sex via
computer
to how to
legally purchase drugs designed
to make
you
smarter.
-cyberlord
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 38/1 People
today
can be seen as
cyberserfs
in overextended information environments run
by
a
global
directorate of
cyberlords
of interlocked media businesses, multina-
tional
corporations,
defense establishments, and
governments. -cyberlove
1994
Jan
24 Time 48/1 He and his
girlfriend
ride off on a
motorcycle,
make
cyberlove,
hitch-hike a ride on a
biplane
and
sky-surf
off the
wing.
-cyber-
man 1993
Jul
5 Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cybermen: Cellular-phone-
toting
bureaucrats.
-Cybermorph
1994 Mar 17
Chicago
Tribune sec 5
3/4
The
Jaguar [computer game]
comes bundled with a futuristic
space flight
simulator called
Cybermorph.
-cybernaut
1991
Jan
Smithsonian 40/2
For
the
eager cybernaut
with a
yen
for
flight,
an excellent
place
to
indulge
is NASA's
Ames Research Center down the
Bay
near Mountain View. 1993 Nov 15 Nation
580/1-2 But what
they
find ... is the rush of
warp velocity.
These
thrill-seeking
cowboy cybernauts,
biker buttonheads, "new
age
mutant
ninja hackers,"
all of
them, are
speed
freaks. 1994Jun 6 Newsweek 16/2 [letter to
ed]
I'm a full-time
emergency-medicine physician,
an enthusiastic
cybernaut
and a husband and
father, so I have no time to waste while at the
computer.
-cybernetia
1990
Mar
Harper's
48/2 [FORUM, Dr Robert Jacobson,
U of
Wash] Computers
are
everywhere,
and
they
link us
together
into a vast social
"cybernetia." -cyber-
news 1994
Jan
18 Atlanta Constitution C3/4 CYBER-NEWS: The
December/
January
Axcess
($3.95)
is
among
the
growing
number of
periodicals
devoted to
cyberculture.
-cybernut
1994
Apr
4
Chicago
Tribune sec 6
11/1 [Jane
Bryant
Quinn] Everywhere you
turn these
days, you
find a
story
about
investing by
computer.
The
cybernuts
are
already
on-line.
-Cyberotica
1994 Mar 14
Newsweek 62/3 [picture caption] Cyberotica:
X-rated CD-ROMs
(above, left),
a
dealer at a San Francisco
computer
show
(below). -cyberpal
1994 Feb 21
People
42
[picture caption]
"At best I'd
hoped
for a
great friendship," says
Marcie Brooks, who's now
engaged
to
cyberpal
Bruce Davis.
-cyber-para-
noid 1993Jul 5 Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cyber-paranoid:
Afraid of tech-
nology.
-cyberphony
1994
May
10
Chicago
Tribune sec 2 1/1
Another ad-
vantage
for the
cyberphony
is that the existence of
special-interest
news
groups
and bulletin boards allows
suspect
information to
gather
momentum
along
paths
where the
rumor-stopping impediment
of
skepticism
is least
likely
to
stop
it.
-cyberpilot
1994 Mar 21 Wall Street Jour R14/2 Worse,
more than a few
novice
cyberpilots
walk
away spacesick
from the
jarring
visual
displays
and the
claustrophobic, sweat-inducing
feel of the
[virtual reality]
headsets.
-Cyber-
poet
1994 Mar 13
Chicago
Tribune sec 5
1/2-5 [head
&
subhead] Cyberpoet
/
Olafur Olafsson
puts pen
to
paper
to write his
novels,
but his work at
Sony may
mean the end of books in
print.
-cyberpolicy
wonking
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 38/1 Vice President Gore's vision of information
penny
capitalism
on the information free market will
result,
he
maintains,
in a
society
403
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AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
which is "healthier, more
prosperous,
and better educated." ... If this is the time
for
cyberpolicy wonking,
it would be better for
everyone
if the
wonking
were
done
correctly.
---cyberpop
1993 Nov 15 Nation 580/3
It's
[cyberpunk is]
video
games, performance art, trash culture, leather bars, designer drugs, hip-
hop
... the industrial noise of SPK and
Skinny Puppy,
Kraftwerk's
"cyberpop"
roborock and Steve Wilson's Buffalo River Grain Elevators.
-cyberpork
1994 Mar 21 Wall StreetJourR4/2 CYBERPORK: Government
money
that flows
to well-connected
information-highway
contractors.
-cyberporn
1994 Mar
14 Newsweek 63/2 The
quality
of much
cyberporn
varies from low to dreadful.
While the idea of electronic
dirty
talk
may
seem
titillating,
the
reality
is often
pathetic-or, worse, boring.
-cyber-puzzle
1994
May
10 Wall Street
Jour
B1 Nintendo Co., master
peddler
of
cyber-puzzles
to
young boys,
has a riddle of
its own.
-cyber-revisiting
1994
May
11 NY Times D7
"My
fear is that this will
be a
cyber-revisiting
of the
blacklisting
that was
prevalent
in the 50's," Mr.
Hayes
wrote.
-cyber-rights
group
1993
Aug
3
Village
Voice 36/1-2 Since
Clipper's
public debut, cyber-rights groups
like
Computer
Professionals for Social Re-
sponsibility
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised
questions
about
the
system's legality.
-cyber-roadkill
1994
Jan
24 US News & World
Report
20/3
But whether the
highway
will revolutionize
society, zapping
advanced
medical data to rural
hospitals,
for
example,
or will
merely
fill 500 channels with
reruns and info
cyber-roadkill
is unclear.
-cyber-romance
1994 Feb 21
People
42/3 Now
planning
a
wedding
for later this
year,
Marcie and Bruce admit that
their
cyber-romance puzzles
most of their friends.
-Cyber-Romeo
1994 Feb
21
People
42
[picture caption] Cyber-Romeo
Brian
Youngerman
still hasn't
found
hisJuliet-despite spending
20-30 hours a week
looking.
-CyberScam-
Artist 1993Jul 12 Atlanta Constitution B2/3 OnJune 30,
in a conference
open
to all WELL subscribers, "Reva" created a
topic-an
area for discussion-titled
"Do
you
know this
CyberScamArtist?"
-cyberschool
1994
Apr
10 Harris-
burg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D10/3 [Jane Bryant Quinn] Cyberschool
isn't
cheap.
The
big
commercial services ...
charge
in the
range
of
$8
to
$15
a month
for a basic service
package. -cyber
science 1993 Leon Lederman The God
Particle
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin)
6 Have we become obsessed with the
equipment?
Is
particle physics
some sort of arcane
"cyber science,"
with
huge
groups
of researchers and
megalithic
machines ... ?
-Cybersell
1994
May
11
NY Times D7 Last week the
lawyers,
Laurence Canter and Martha
Siegel,
an-
nounced that
they
had formed a
company
called
Cybersell,
which will insert ads
for itself and clients in
every public space
in
Usenet, regardless
of whether the
users want to see them.
-cyberserf
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U)
39/1 Users of the information
highway
are
cyberserfs
of the information feudal
age.
-cybershift
1994
May
15
Chicago
Tribune sec 7
5/3 Signs
of a
great
American
cybershift
abound as
analysts
almost
universally
estimate that 27
percent
of U.S. households contain at least one
personal computer. -cybersigh
1993
Sep
6 Newsweek 36/4 Presumably
such
cybersighs
reflect the
deeper
on-
line intimacies to which we have no access.
-cyber-slang
1994
Jun
22 Wall
StreetJourAl
Quot
sv BOZO FILTER
-cybersleaze
1994
May
16
Chicago
Tribune
sec 1
2/2 About a
year ago [Adam] Curry
started a
daily "cybersleaze report"
on
Internet in which he
gave
his
spin
on rock
industry
stuff.
-cybersnob
1994
Jun
12 Atlanta Constitution H5/1 Quot
sv CYBERHICK
-cyberspaceman
1994
404
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
Feb 21 People 42/2-43/1 And not all
cyberspacemen
know the nuances of
romance-as Christian
Sykes
discovered
when,
as an
experiment,
he
logged
on
as a woman.
-cyberspatial
1993 Nov 4 London Review
of
Books 38/3 To the
telcos-telephone companies-they [hackers] are rats
lurking
in the
cyberspatial
wainscoting.
1994
Spring
Proteus
(Shippensburg U) 38/1 If
people today
really
are "in" a
cyberspatial global village,
then it is
revealing
to tease out other
dimensions of the
metaphor.
-Cyberspeak
1994 Mar
WordPerfect for
Win-
dows
Magazine
98 [head & article] CYBERSPEAK / When
you
send e-mail to a
local bulletin board
system
or to a
colleague
a world
away,
certain courtesies
should
always
be observed.
-cyberspeed
1994
Apr
U. The National
College
Magazine 20/3
In
addition, innovations in electronic communications allow
people
from all over the world to
exchange information,
via
computer modem,
at
cyberspeed,
and
people
are
finding they
don't need to
rely
on traditional
media sources.
-cyberstar
1994 Feb 14
InfoWorld
49/2 Internet
cyberstar
Vint
Cerfjust signed
a deal to turn
pro
with MCI. ... I think it's
great
that Vint
and other
cyberstars
are
turning pro, going
from the
nonprofit
to the
for-profit
side of the Internet.
Jun
6
InfoWorld 50/3 Of course this latest
crop
of
swagger-
ing cyberstars
has no slam dunk ahead of them.
-cyberstardom
1994 Feb 14
InfoWorld 49/2 Dr. Vinton (not Vincent) G. Cerf
began
his rise to
cyberstardom
in 1969 as a UCLA student
working
on ARPAnet, the
first-generation
Internet. -cyberstation, cyber
station 1993 Dec 6 US News & World
Report
58/2 [sidebar] Carl Malamud ...: Founder of the first
"cyber
station" to broad-
cast audio
(and
soon
video)
on the Internet and host of "Geek of the
Week." 1994
Apr
18
InfoWorld 61/1
Quot
sv CYBERCAST
--cyber-style
1994
Jun
16
Chicago
Tribune sec 3 1/5 At this
point, offering
a sort of
cyber-style
travel
agency
to
potential
customers is almost as
important
as
providing
the technol-
ogy, according
to results of a recent
survey
of consumer
awareness,
interest and
willingness
to
pay
for interactive TV and other new media.
-cybersuburb
1994 Mar 8
Village
Voice 19/3
Some folks from AAGPSO [Asian
American
Graduate and Professional Student
Organization]
are
organizing
it
[a
confer-
ence at the U of Mich],
and
many
of that
cybersuburb
will be
meeting
there in
RL
[real life] for the first time.
-cybersuitcase
1994
Jan
24 Time
46/2
[subhead & text]
Xplora
1: Peter Gabriel's Secret World / Open
his
cybersuitcase
and find a
passport,
a bathrobe and
backstage
concert
passes.
Then click
your
mouse and ... voila!
-cybersurfer
1993 Dec 6 US News & World
Report
57/2
Cynthia
Denton is not a
cybersurfer.
In
fact,
she knows little about
computer
technology
and less about hacker culture. 1994 Feb 14 Newsweek
49/2
Marc
Porat, General
Magic's CEO, wants to turn the couch
potato
into a
"cybersurfer
who can
jump
into ... all kinds of
places
in the world."
-cyberswinger
1994
Mar 14 Newsweek 62/1 They
are
among
thousands of
cyberswingers
linked
together by
networks of adult-oriented bulletin boards with names like KinkNet
and ThrobNet.
-cybertap
1994
Jun
13 Newsweek 60/3
Two federal
agencies
hold the
keys
to
Clipper codes, and release them
only
to law-enforcement
officials with a court order for a
cybertap.
-cybertech
1993
Jun
14 Time
[contents page]
58 CYBERTECH: Microsoft's
Blueprint
for the Future
/
Bil-
lionaire Bill Gates aims for the
paperless
office.
-cybertedium
1993
Jul
5
Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cybertedium /
There was
astro,
then techno.
Now,
cyberis
the
prefix
that means "the future."
--cyberterrain
1992 Dec 27 Colum-
405
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AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
bia Missourian GI [San Francisco Chronicle] 'The book is
basically
a
knowledge
map,
a Baedeker's
guide
to
cyberterrain," says Queen
Mu.
-cyberthief
1994
May
2 Time 49
[picture caption]
Small size and
high
value made the
micropro-
cessors that
power personal computers
an irresistible
target
for
cyberthieves.
-cyberwonk
1993
Jul
5 Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cyberwonk:
Technol-
ogy
nerd.
-cyber
world, cyber-world
1993Jul 12 Atlanta Constitution B2/5
"I
was
experimenting.
... I didn't think that the same concerns about
fidelity
I
apply reflexively
in
physical relationships applied
here in
cyberspace.
I was
wrong.
... The
cyber
world is the same as the real world."
Sep
6 Newsweek 36/4
The
September
issue of Wired, a bible of the new
cyber-world,
contains what's
probably
the first
epistolary
fiction of E-mail, "Love Over the Wires," by
Paulina
Borsook.
-cyberyear
1994
Apr
U. The National
College Magazine 3/1 [U-
Mail] I wonder, am I "old"
enough
in
cyberyears
to share
your precious
do-
main?
-Cybrarian
1993
Jul
5 Newsweek 8/1 [Cliche Watch] Cybrarians:
Li-
brarians who use
computers. -Cyburb, cyburb
1994Jan 24 Atlanta Constitu-
tion B3/1 Welcome to the
Cyburbs,
that
computer-driven gameland
on the
outskirts of
reality just
off the information
highway
where more of us are
stopping
these
days
to avoid
getting
a life. .... [?] "Computer games
have the
potential
for real addictiveness," saysJohnny Wilson, editor of
Computer
Gam-
ing World, where
gamers
who
go
overboard are
jokingly
referred to as
cyburbs.
cyberizing
n
Causing
someone to be interested in the use of the
computer
and
the information
superhighway
1994
May
15
Chicago
Tribune sec 7 5/3 The
cyberizing ofJoe
andJill Six-Pack that forces such media attention to what until
recently
had been the
province
of us
propeller
heads stems from a
carefully
orchestrated
campaign by virtually
the entire
computer
establishment.
cyborg
vt
Modify by adding
artificial
parts
to 1993 Dec 26 Columbia SC State
D3/1
[San
Francisco Chronicle] Or, alternately,
if
you're
the
techno-geek
in the
family,
let's
say you've got your copy
of Mondo
magazine
in front of
you,
and
you're cruising
an article called
"Cyborging
the
Body
Politic: I have seen the
future, and it is
morphed."
domain; domain name n [New Hacker's cf
domainist]
The
parts
of an e-mail
address to the
right
of the @
symbol
1994
Jun
12 Atlanta Constitution H5/4-5
[Steve Lohr, NY
Times] Look to the
right
of the
(AT) sign
in an electronic mail
address. It is called the "domain," and it indicates where the mailbox is.
Typically,
this will be an
organization,
a
company,
a
university
or a commercial
network service. ... But real status
belongs
to those
very
few
people
whose
domain name is their last name-a direct connection to the
Net,
the closest
anyone
can
get.
...
[?] Recently,
turf wars have flared over
rights
to domain
names. MTV: Music Television last month sued Adam
Curry,
a former
host,
who
claimed the name mtv.com. "This is a trademark issue," said Carol Robinson, an
MTV
spokeswoman.
e-mail n count
[E-mail
is in
many
dictionaries as a noncount noun for the
process
or collective mass of communication]
A
message
received
by
e-
mail. 1994Jun 22 Wall
StreetJourAl "Just phone me," insists [Adrian Rietveld]
the chief executive of WordPerfect
Corp.
"I
get
too
many
e-mails."
e-mailbox n
[BNWC]
The electronic address to which e-mail is sent
1994Jun
22 Wall Street
Jour A10/2
As if the 200 electronic
messages
that land in Mr.
406
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
McNealy's
e-mailbox on a
busy
day
aren't
enough,
Mr.
McNealy
even sends
himself e-mail.
e-mailer n
[BNWC] One who sends e-mail 1994
Jun
22 Wall Street Jour Al
An effusive e-mailer has tremendous
power
and reach.
FAQ
n
[New Hacker's] Frequently
asked
question(s), posted
with answers in a
computer
file for new users of the Internet 1993
Sep
6 Newsweek 37/2 [dictio-
nary
for a new world] ...
FAQ: Frequently
asked
questions (an
FAQ
list is a
compendium
of accumulated lore, posted frequently
to
high-volume
news
groups
in an
attempt
to forestall
FAQs).
Dec 6 Time 63/2 Rule No. 1
[of
netiquette]:
Don't ask dumb
questions.
In fact, don't ask
any questions
at all
before
you've
read the
FAQ
(frequently
asked
questions)
files. 1994
Jan
17
Maclean's 43
[picture caption:
Code of Conduct] Over the
years,
Internet has
developed
its own abrasive code of behavior. ... Rather than ask about the
system, neophytes
should consult lists of
FAQs (frequently
asked
questions). May
30 Newsweek 6/1 [Buzzwords] Some shorthand used
by computer
e-mail vets: ...
FAQ: Frequently
asked
questions. Jun
19 NY Times
Magazine Quot
sv NETTIE
flame [New Hacker's; Jargon;
BNWC] Entered in ANW, AS 68.4; the
following
are
derivatives -flame out vt
Anger (someone) by sending
such mes-
sages
1994Jun 19 NY Times
Magazine Quot
sv CYBERBOOR -flaming
Angry,
antagonistic
Idem
Quot
sv
NETIQUETTE
-flame n
Anger
and
antagonism
in an e-mail
message
1994 Mar
WordPerfect
for Windows
Magazine98/1 Quot
sv
SYSOP
infobahn, Infobahn n Information
superhighway
1994 Mar 14 Newsweek 63/3
"The minute
they
invented cinema, people put
sex on screen."
Why
should the
computer
be
any
different? For erotic
explorers
on the infobahn, the trick will
be
keeping
their hands on the wheel.
May
16 Newsweek 54/3 The Infobahn-
A.K.A. The Information
Superhighway-may
be the most
hyped phenomenon
in
history-or
it could be the road to the future. In
any case, women want to
get
on.
May
30
InfoWorld
47 [head] Surfing
the Infobahn: Frustration
grows
as
the fun wears out.
May
30 Newsweek 6/1 [Buzzwords]
When
you're
in the fast
lane on the Infobahn, you
can't waste time
typing
a full sentence when an
acronym
will do.
Jun
6 Newsweek 16/1 Quot
sv CYBERHYPE
Jun
14 Atlanta
Constitution E3/1-4 [head
& text, from San
Jose Mercury News] Cyberspace
upstarts propose etiquette
rules for infobahn / ... Phoenix
lawyers
Laurence A.
Canter and Martha S.
Siegel,
reviled in
cyberspace
for
breaking
some of its most
basic customs, issued a list of
proposed
Internet
advertising guidelines
last week.
info
pike
n Information
superhighway
1994 Feb 1 Wall Street Jour Al
Promoters are
hitching
rides on the "info
pike,"
too.
(Other proposed
terms
reported
in this article are
information canal, information skyway, information
ocean, ideaspace.)
info
superpike
n Information
superhighway
1994
Jun
12 Atlanta Constitution
H10/4 How did word leak out that the info
superpike
was
becoming
the Great
White
Way?
...
[1]
The
telephone companies
admit their trial areas are in
affluent
neighborhoods; business,
after all, is business.
Internaut n User of the Internet 1994 Feb 14 InfoWorld 49/3
The Internet has
caught on,
and Vint [Cerf]
is the beloved
spiritual
leader of 20 million Internet
enthusiasts worldwide. I am sure that all
Internauts, as Vint calls
us,
will
agree
407
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
with me that from now on we should talk not of
surfing
the Internet, but of
cerfing
the Internet.
Internetter n User of the Internet 1993 Oct 11 Business Week 142/3 While
Internetters are accustomed to
swapping
scores of E-mail notes
per day, Prodigy
provides just
30 free
messages per
month.
I-way
n
[I(nformation superhigh)way
with a
pun
on
highway]
Information
super-
highway
1994 May 23 Wall Street Jour B4/2 [Microsoft's William] Gates ...
recently signed
a multimillion-dollar contract to co-write a book on the future of
the
"I-way." May
29
Chicago
Tribune sec 7 5/5 More
light
is shed
by translating
the
big
national numbers to the local level in the
category
of modem use and
thus
estimating
local access to what Times Mirror [Center for the
People
and
the Press] calls the
"I-way." Jun
6 Newsweek 16/2 [Mail Call] And one
person
thought
we should have stressed a
particular angle-that
"thousands are
finding
love on the
I-way." Jun
22 Wall Street Jour Al The information
highway may
bring
a new era of
democracy
and
openness,
as its boosters
suggest,
but
you
wouldn't know it from the e-mail
lifestyles
of the
"I-way's"
rich and famous.
LEAF n Law Enforcement Access Field; computer
code that allows
wiretapping
decypherment
of an
encrypted message
1994Jun 13 Newsweek 60/3 Together,
these
strings
are the
[Clipper] chips's
LEAF
(Law Enforcement Access
Field).
The
receiving computer
must
recognize
the LEAF as valid before it can decode
the
message.
The LEAF also tells an authorized
wiretapper
which
key
it needs to
decrypt
the
subsequent message.
... Armed with the
key, agents easily
un-
scramble the
message.
... Someone who wants to foil
eavesdroppers
could
transmit a
rogue
LEAF. When the FBI used the LEAF to retrieve the
key
to the
code, it would come
up
with the
wrong
one.
lurk vi Read
messages
on an electronic bulletin board without
contributing
to
it 1993
Sep
18 Weekend [Vancouver] Sun D14/2-3
Reading [Paulina] Borsook's
Love Over the Wires is a little like
lurking
on a
popular
bulletin board. 1994Jan
17 Maclean's 43
[picture caption:
Code of
Conduct] Newcomers are
expected
to
"lurk"
silently, learning
about the
system
before
joining
news
group
discussions. Mar
WordPerfect for
Windows
Magazine 98/2
As I lurk about the
various
cyber-communities,
certain notations seem to
predominate. Apr
6
Martin C. Perdue [Internet message]
I subscribed several weeks
ago,
but I am
just
now
getting
around to
introducing myself.
I'm new to this mode of commu-
nication however I believe the term for what I have been
doing
is
"lurking."
lurker n
[NewHacker's] 1991
Sep
16
Newsweek8/3-4 [BUZZWORDS]
Lurker:
Subscriber to a bulletin board who reads
messages
but never contributes. 1993
Sep
18 Weekend
[Vancouver]
Sun
D14/2-3 [Paulina]
Borsook weaves into her
work the
sensibility
of the "lurker"-the
generic
term for
people
who
spend
hours online
reading
other
people's messages
without ever
leaving any
words of
their own. 1994
Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D
10/1 Jane Bryant
Quinn]
You can
silently
watch the conversation roll
by (observers
are called
"lurkers"). -lurkerly
Date n/a Paul Emmons
[Internet message]
He wishes
that certain
people
remained more
lurkerly.
netiquette
n
[New Hacker's] Appropriate
behavior on a
computer network,
esp
Internet 1993
Tracy
Laquey
The Internet
Companion (New
York: Addison-
Wesley)
68
(subhead) Netiquette, Ethics, and
Digital
Tricks of the Trade. Dec
6 Time 63/2
But
you
must learn new
languages (like UNIX),
new forms of
408
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AMONG THE NEW WORDS
address
(like president@whitehouse.gov)
and new
ways
of
expressing feeling
(like
those
ubiquitous sideways smiley faces),
and
you
must master a whole set of
rules for how to behave, called
netiquette [to use Internet]. 1994
Jun
14
Atlanta Constitution E3/2 "These are
people
who violated fundamental rules of
'netiquette,'
and now
they
are
acting
like the
Emily
Post of the network,"
sputtered
a furious Tom Mandel, a well-known
figure
in the virtual
community
and a futurist at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.
Jun
19 NY Times
Magazine [William Safire] Another breach of
netiquette:
excessive
cross-post-
ing, asking
for information in a number of forums, which sometimes
brings
a
flaming response.
netter n [NewHacker's] User of the Internet 1993 Dec 6 Time63/2 All that is
starting
to
change, however, as successive waves of netters demand, and eventu-
ally get,
more
user-friendly
tools for
navigating
the Internet.
nettie n One who uses the Internet 1994
Jun
19 NY Times
Magazine [William
Safire] And before
asking
a basic
question,
the
polite
nettie
"FAQ-checks";
that's
looking up "Frequently
Asked
Questions"
before
posting
a
query.
netwriter n One who sends
messages
on the Internet 1994
Jul
4 Time 67/3
Netwriters
freely
lace their
prose
with
strange acronyms
and
"smileys,"
the little
faces constructed with
punctuation
marks and intended to
convey
the winks,
grins
and
grimaces
of
ordinary
conversations.
netwriting
n
Writing
on the Internet 1994
Jul
4 Time 67/1-2 Some of the
most successful
netwriting
is
produced
in
computer conferences, where writers
compose
in a kind of collaborative heat, knocking
ideas
against
one another
until
they spark.
newbee,
newbie n New user of the Internet 1993 Dec 6 Time 63/1 Instead of
feeling
surrounded
by information, first-timers
("newbies"
in the
jargon
of the
Net)
are
likely
to find themselves adrift in a borderless sea. 1994
May
30
InfoWorld 47/1 Another issue, a lack of reliable
operations, gets
us to the heart
of what's
happening
on Internet. Because so
may
newbees are
logging
in
every
day,
it is
getting
harder and harder to
get
connected to those information
sources that are
popular.
off-line reader n 1994
Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D10/4 [Jane
Bryant Quinn]
Bulletin-board users can save
money
with an "off-line reader." It
lets
you
download
messages
onto
your computer,
where
you
can read them at
leisure and
compose
answers. You then dial
up
the
system
and
upload your
messages
all at once.
remailer n
Computer
in a network that transmits an e-mail
message
without
identifying
its source 1993
Aug
3
Village
Voice 34/2 & 35/2 Anonymous
remailers: These
systems
aim to conceal not the contents of a
message
but its
source. A remailer is a network-connected
computer
that takes in
e-mail,
then
sends it on to a destination
specified
in
attached, encrypted instructions,
thus
placing
a veil between sender and receiver. If the
message
is sent
through
a
chain of even a few remailers, the veil
quickly
becomes rock solid, guaranteeing
the sender's
anonymity.
1994 Mar 31 Los
Angeles
Times D4/5
Because there is
a demand for
anonymity
on the
Internet,
there is now a
supply
of
anonymity
on
the Internet. Individuals can send their
messages
to "remailers" that can
strip
out the headers
containing
the authentic return address.
[?]
These remailers,
in
turn, can send the
messages
on to other remailers. In other words, Internet
409
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AMERICAN SPEECH 69.4
(1994)
remailers can "launder"
messages
on the road to their intended destinations in
ways
that
completely
obliterate their
origins.
site kill file n 1994
May
11 NY Times D7 "What
people
will
probably
do is invent
'site kill files,'" wrote David
Hayes,
a Usenet
regular
who works for the National
Aeronautics and
Space
Administration's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasa-
dena, Calif., in an electronic interview. Such files would allow a usenet adminis-
trator or user to block
any messages coming
from a certain
computer
or certain
parts
of the network. ...
[1] "Eventually,
I
predict
that such site kill files will be
used to censor
politically unpopular
views
(like mine, for
example)."
spamming
gerund [New Hacker's cf
spam v] 1994
May
11 NY Times D7 Most
news
groups
have rules that
discourage
the
posting
of items not
directly
related
to their
topics. So, the net
community
was
enraged
by
the indiscriminate and
voluminous
way
in which the
lawyers posted
their ad.
[?] Among
network
veterans, such random
posting
is called
"spamming"-a
term derived from a
brand of
pink,
canned meat that
splatters messily
when hurled.
[1]
If the
spamming
tactic used
by
the husband-and-wife law firm of Canter &
Siegel
becomes
widespread,
"it will
destroy
the network," said
Tony Rutkowski, a
lawyer
and
engineer
who is executive director of the Internet
Society.
sysop
n
[sys(tem) op(erator);
New Hacker's;
Jargon;
BNWC]
Manager
of an
electronic bulletin board 1990
Aug
PC/Computing 128/1 Hacker
groups
are
like street
gangs,
he
says:
the
hierarchy changes
all the time, and the
organiza-
tion is
very
loose. [?] One
way
to
get
to the
top
of this
shifting hierarchy
is to be
a
sysop
for a
pirate
bulletin board, as Cable Pair was. 1993
Aug
6
Chicago
Tribune sec 1 16/3-4 If the bulletin board service's
system operator,
or
"sysop,"
does not
verify
the customer's
age,
it's
likely
the customer will have access to the
files. 1994 Mar
WordPerfect
for Windows
Magazine 98/1 Some of these back-
and-forth "threads" can run
up
to 40 or 50
messages
until a
savvy sysop (forum
manager) drops
in to douse the flames. Mar 28 US News & World
Report 73/1
Ron
Solberg, system operator
or
"sysop"
for
CompuServe's public
relations and
marketing forum, suggests writing
an article in
your specialty
and
placing
it in a
forum
library. Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News D10/4 Jane Bryant
Quinn]
Each chat
group
or bulletin board is led
by
a
systems operator
or
"sysop,"
whose
job
is to
try
to
keep
the record
straight.
thread n [New Hacker's] Series of
postings
on the same
subject
to an electronic
bulletin board 1994 Mar
WordPerfect for
Windows
Magazine 98/1
Quot
sv
sYsoP Mar 2 [Internet message]
In addition to
archiving
discussion threads
and informational
posts
to the list, as
many
lists do, IATH-L extracts from its
archives to
publish
articles and reference documents on the World Wide
Web. Mar 9 [Internet message]
Thanks to this thread I will have some obnox-
ious
thing
to
say
about variants of Adam's off ox next time she makes such a
pronouncement. Apr
6
Cathy
Ambler [Internet message] My
thread has been
to review
prescriptive
literature on farm structures of all sorts as
possible guides
and models, but this has been
only moderately
useful.
twit filter n
Computer program
that removes bulletin board
messages by
unwel-
come senders; cf BOZO FILTER 1994
Apr
10
Harrisburg
PA
Sunday
Patriot-News
D10/5 [Jane Bryant Quinn]
Someone obnoxious can break
up conversations,
post
abusive
messages
and harass members
by
E-mail.... A few boards have "twit
filters" that delete all notes from someone the
sysop
deems
disruptive.
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