| aegis | n. Protection, impregnable defence; under the ~ (auspices) of. [L, f. Gk aigis mythical shield of Zeus or Athene] |
| allegro | adv., a., & n. (pl. S. (Mus.) (Movement) in brisk time. [It.,=lively, gay] |
| aspect ratio | a. (Aeron,. of aerofoil span to mean chord; Telv., of picture width to height) {and, we add, the aspect ratio of the height of a boat's mast to the boat's length; consider the magnificent aspect ratio of the Star Boat.}[ME, f. L aspectus (ADspicere -spectlook at)] |
| avatar | n. (Hindu Myth) descent of diety to earth in incarnate form; incarnation; manifestation; phase. [f. Skr. avatãra decent (áva down, tar-- pass over)] Here, avatar is divorced from religion and means no more than the on screen images that bop around.  Alden Bugly , for example. |
| Bawlmer | How to say "Baltimore," hon. |
| Bells and Whistles | n. [by analogy with the toyboxes on theater organs] Features added to a program or system to make it more flavorful from a hacker's point of view, without necessarily adding to its utility for its primary function. Distinguished from chrome, which is intended to attract users. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle.  |
| boîte | [bwat] nf box. boîte is a marvelous french word which is much livelier than its English counterpart, the stark "box." At the Alden Bugly Foundation, it's primarily a synonym for computer but we also use boîte variously in a number of its French connotations: et toi, boîte à malice?- what about you, you clever little monkey.
boîte de Pandore- Pandora's box
boîte aux lettres électronique- Electronic mailbox
boîte noire- black box
boîte [discothèque] (night) club
boîte de jazz- jazz club
mettre du foo en boîte-- to preserve, can, or tin foo. |
| braggadocio | n. (pl. ~s). Empty boasting. [formed by Spenser 1590 as name (meaning boaster) on prec. or foll. ans It. augment. suf.-occio] |
| brouhaha | n. Commotion, sensation; hubbub, uproar. [F] |
| chrome | n. [from automotive slang via wargaming] Showy features added to attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a system. "The 3D icons in Motif are just chrome, but they certainly are *pretty* chrome!" Distinguished from bells and whistles by the fact that the latter are usually added to gratify developers' own desires for featurefulness. Often used as a term of contempt. There was a fleet of all-chrome pickup trucks at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Atlanta in 1996. |
| de rigueur | pred. a. Required by custom or etiquette (evening dress is de rigueur). [F., = of strictness] |
| "fair use " | use of copyright © material for private study, scholarship, or research without obtaining explicit permission. |
| foo | Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything esp. programs and files foo. Here, foo describes a limited type of computer presentation akin to a "prose home movie." When foo is in progress we refer to the computer with the French word boîte in the sense of a night-club (boîte de nuit) and in the sense of a box and thus a "boîte de foo" implies a computer used exclusively for running prose home movies [not a bad idea in our say]. |
| flavorful | adj. Full of flavor (sense 2); esthetically pleasing. |
An application program which will search a particular machine connected to the Internet for a specific entity and return any information about the fingered enitity that may be stored on the machine's finger server. You need to supply a search string, e.g., finger hakala@boardwatch.com which includes the full DNS name of the specific machine. Therefore finger does not help you learn where a given entity connects to the Internet, but you can learn which people use a given site. See also ping. | |
| friendly persuasion | quavery earnestness |
| hyperbole | n. (Rhet.) Exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally; hence hyperbolical a., ~ISM. ~IST, ns. [L. as prec.] |
| Kitsch | n. Worthless pretentiousness in art; art of this type; hence ~'y a. [G.] |
| l'éternel retour | (f.) endless sameness |
| luddite | n. & a. (Members) of bands of English Artisans (1811-16) who raised riots for destruction of machinery; (person) similarly engaged in seeking to obstruct progress. [perh. f. Ned lud, insane person who destroyed two stocking-frames about 1779. See electronic Luddites |
| Meretricious | a. Of or befitting a prostitute; (of ornament, literary style, etc.) showily but falsely attractive; hence ~LY adv.,~NESS n. [f. L meretricius f. meretrix -tricis harlot (mereri be hired: see TRIX) + -OUS] |
| miasma | (-z-) n. (pl. ~ata or ~as. Infectious or noxious emanation; hence ~AL, ~A'TIC adjs. [GK,=defilement (miaino pollute)] |
| montage | n. Selection, cutting, and piecing together as a consecutive whole of separate sections of cinema or television film; (production of) composite pictures made from various elements; (production of) composite whole from juxtaposed pieces of music, painting, photographs, etc. [F. (monter MOUNT; see-AGE)] |
| MOSAIC | A World Wide Web interface program available for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX X-Windows that provides a graphic multimedia interface for WWW home pages. |
| Oeuvre | n. (Totality of) works of an author, painter, composer, etc. [F, = work, f. L OPERA] |
| peeps | n. People (plural; singular: peep); a non-sexist identification; originated in the Annapolis saloons in the later 1970's as in wait-peeps, bus-peeps, and bar-peeps. |
| Ping | an application program that will tell you if a particular entity is presently connected to the Internet. Useful in diagnosing connection problems or checking up on employees who should be working instead of playing Doom. See also finger. |
| pixel | noun. Computer Science. The smallest image-forming unit of a video display. [PIX1 + EL(EMENT).] |
| POP | Point of Presence- in the telephone world this is the geographic location of a particular switch or service. |
| prose home movie | a sort of short story |
| QWK | File Extension for bags created by Quick Mail- a standard for offline mail readers. |
| Rainmaker | n. Amer. Ind. rain-doctor;~-making, attempt to magically increase rainfall. | |
| rather | adv. 1. More, truly, to a greater extent, as a more accurate description or preferable account of the matter, or to be more precise, (is rather good than bad; derived rather from imagination that from reason; orderliness is not the result of law, rather it is the cause of it; late last night, or rather, early this morning);... See rawther |
| rawther | a synonym for rather that Alden, himself, glomped from The Reliable Source column, in the Style Section of the Monday, May 13, 1996 Washington Post, written by Annie Groer and Ann Gerhart (Who's On First) in which Paul Peck (who in response to the question "How does a career civil servant afford [$76,000] it?" said "I made some rawther good investments," and then Annie and Ann wrote: "His largess will fund eight Sidwell scholarships and help diversfy a rawther [italics are the Post's] upper-crust student body." Well struck, Annie and Ann. |
| Re-Authoring | Re-Authoring is what it takes to turn mined files into HTML pages. There are many tools (Word/Word-Perfect/etc. to HTML converters) which can make re-authoring almost automatic. Just how automatic depends on how satisfied you are with the results. |
| Retreat | v. & n.Go back, retire, relinquish a position... |
| roach | A convex curve in the edge of a sail, where the sailcloth extends beyond a straight line from corner to corner. |
| Schmaltz | n. Sugary sentimentalism in music etc.; hence ~Y a. [Yiddish, f. G schmalz dripping lard] |
| sfumato | italian--We can always tell a Leonardo work by his treatment of hair, angelic in its fineness, and by the lack of any rigidity of contour. One form glides imperceptibly into another (the Italian term is sfumato), a wonder of glazes creating the most subtle of transitions between tones and shapes. The angel's face in the painting known as the Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery, London, or the Virgin's face in the Paris version of the same picture, have an interior wisdom, an artistic wisdom that has no pictorial rival.
|
| Shareware | computer software which users are encouraged to copy and distrubute to others, and to evaluate for a specific or indefinite period of time. The author gives the user a license to "try before you buy," and requires voluntary payment of a specific sum of money if the user continues to use the software. Failure to pay the requested fee is a legal violation of the author's copyright rights. |
| silopanna | Annapolis spelled backwards. |
| Siren | n. 1. (Gk. Myth) Any of several women, or creatures half woman and half bird, living on rocky isle to which they lured unwary seafarers with enchanting singing. 2. Sweet Singer. 3. Dangerously fasinanting women, temptress, a tempting pursuit etc.; (attrib.) irresitably tempting, as of a siren. |
| sonorous | a. Resonant; loud-sounding; (of speech, style, etc.) pretentious, imposing; hence or cogn. sono'rity, ~ness, ns., ~ly adv. [f. L. sonorus (sonor sound)+-OUS |
| Specious | a.Of good appearance, plausible, fair or right on the surface but not in reality, (specious argument, tale, pretence, person, appearance); hence or cogn. speciosity, ~ness, ns., ~ly adv. [ME,= beautiful f. L speciosus (as species)] |
| Spoonerisim | Accidental or deliberate transposition of initial letters etc. of two or more words, (you have hissed the mystery lectures).[f. Rev. W. A. Spooner, Engl. scholar d. 1930, reputed to make such errors in speaking, + -ISM]. |
| Star boat question | Who needs who the most? |
| textbook | n....~book, manual of instruction, standard book in a branch of study... |
| viscera | n pl. The interiour organs in the great cavities of the body (eg. brain, heart, liver), esp. in the abdomen (e.g. the intestines). [L., pl. of viscus |
| visceral | a. Of the viscera; relating to inward feelings; ~ (=sympathetic) nerve. [f. prec.+-al] |
| work of art | n....4....a work of art, fine picture, building, poem, etc,;[we add audio. Examples include html files containing copyrighted text of, say, an e. e. cummings poem such as sh estiffl, Image files, etc.) such as Tim Stoner's Map of Manhattan, and Killing Me Softly (a Norman Gimbel, not Burt Bacaharach, composition) as found on the Fugees (Refugee Camp) CD: COLUMBIA, © (P) 1996 Sony Music Entertainment, Inc./Manufactured by Columbia Records/550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022-3211/"Columbia" Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Marca Registrada/WARNING: All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. |
| ZIP | File extension for files catalogued and compressed using Phil Katz' PKZIP compression utilities. |
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English; based on The Oxford English Dictionary and its supplements; first edited by H. W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler; Sixth edition edited by J. B. Sykes; © Oxford University Press, 1964, 1976; Sixth edition 1976; Tenth impression 1980.
For the definition and entymology of French words we use Dictionnaire, Général, Francais, Larouss, 17, rue du Montparnasse, 75298 Paris Cedex 06, France.
the definitions of technical terms relating to the Web are from Boardwatch Magazine.
Also see The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 3.3.1, 25 JAN 1996
If we must--we can't find it in The Concise Oxford (very, very rare)-- we use The American Heritage<< Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved. [as found on Bookshelf '95 by Microsoft.
Sail Power by Wallace Ross with Carl Chapman; Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1977. Copyright © 1973, 1974, 1975 by Wallace Ross.
Also see Kehoe, Bredan, Zen and the Art of the Internet: Beginner's Guide 2nd ed. TK5105.8 .I58 K44 1992 (The first edition is available online.
Also see Krol, Ed, The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog. REF TK5105.8 .I58 K86 1994 One of the most robust, useful and popular all-purpose guides available. Provides some of the best technical explanations around.
