|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wizard mode n. [from rogue] A special access mode of a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. Generally not used for operating systems themselves (root mode or wheel mode would be used instead). This term is often used with respect to games that have editable state. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wizardly adj. Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wok-on-the-wall n. A small microwave dish antenna used for cross-campus private network circuits, from the obvious resemblance between a microwave dish and the Chinese culinary utensil. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
womb box n. 1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment. 2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; mundanely called a flight case. Used for delicate test equipment, electronics, and musical instruments. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WOMBAT /wom'bat/ adj. [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which are both profoundly uninteresting in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as wrestling with a wombat. See also crawling horror, SMOP. Also note the rather different usage as a metasyntactic variable in Commonwealth Hackish. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
wonky /wong'kee/ adj. [from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for broken. Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar." Also in wonked out. See funky, demented, bozotic. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
woofer n. [University of Waterloo] Some varieties of wide paper for printers have a perforation 8.5 inches from the left margin that allows the excess on the right-hand side to be torn off when the print format is 80 columns or less wide. The right-hand excess may be called 'woofer'. This term (like tweeter) has been in use at Waterloo since 1972, but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers to the bass speaker(s) on a hi-fi. |
|
|
|
|
|