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chiclet keyboard n. A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of chewing gum. (Chiclets is the brand name of a variety of chewing gum that does in fact resemble the keys of chiclet keyboards). Used esp. to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop products got launched using them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more. |
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chine nual /sheen'yu- l/ n. obs. [MIT] The LISP Machine Manual, so called because the title was wrapped around the cover so only those letters showed on the front. |
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Chinese Army technique n. Syn. Mongolian Hordes technique. |
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choad /chohd/ n. Synonym for 'penis' used in alt.tasteless and popularized by the denizens thereof. They say: "We think maybe it's from Middle English but we're all too damned lazy to check the OED." [I'm not. It isn't. ESR] This term is alleged to have been inherited through 1960s underground comics, and to have been recently sighted in the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. Speakers of the Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati languages have confirmed that 'choad' is in fact an Indian vernacular word equivalent to 'fuck'; it is therefore likely to have entered English slang via the British Raj. |
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choke v. To reject input, often ungracefully. "NULs make System V's 1pr(1) choke." "I tried building an EMACS binary to use X, but cpp(1) choked on all those #defines." See barf, gag, vi. 2. [MIT] More generally, to fail at any endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the popular definition is "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.'' |
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chomp vi. To lose; specifically, to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See bagbiter. |
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A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold the four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. Now open and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much like what Pac-Man does in the classic video game, though this pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means 'chomp chomp' (see "Verb Doubling" in the "Jargon Construction" section of the Prependices). The hand may be pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can use both hands at once. Doing this to a person is equivalent to saying "You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. You might do this if someone told you that a program you |
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