Welcome to the heart of clarity for technical language. This page serves as a curated reference of definitions, jargon, and computer‑related terms you’ll encounter throughout CATENCODE and beyond. Whether you’re decoding acronyms, clarifying system names, or exploring foundational concepts in computing and digital technology, our goal is to demystify the terms so you can move forward with confidence.
Here you’ll find concise, accurate explanations written for real understanding — not just dictionary echoes. Think of it as your living glossary: sorted for easy browsing, linked for deeper context, and structured so that both beginners and seasoned users can find exactly what they need without wading through unnecessary complexity.
A — Abstraction, Algorithm, API, AI
ABAP Abbrev ABEND Accumulator ACK Ad-Hockery Ada Adger Admin ADVENT AES Agoric Systems AI koans AI-Complete AIDS Airplane Rule Aliasing Bug Alice and Bob All-Elbows Alpha Particles ALT Alt Bit Aluminum Book Amoeba AMP Amp Off Amper Angle Brackets Angry Fruit Salad AOS API App Arc Arc Wars Archive Arena ARG Armor-Plated Asbestos Asbestos Cork Award Asbestos Longjohns ASCII Art ASCII Assembly Attoparsec Autobogotiphobia Automagically AWK
B — Backup, Binary, Bandwidth
Back Door Back end Backbone Cabal Backbone Site Backgammon Background Backspace and Overstrike Backup Backward Combatability BAD Bad Thing Bag on the Side Bagbiter BAMF Banana Label Banana Problem Bandwidth Bang Bang On Bang Path Banner Bar Bare Metal Barf Barfulation Barfulous Baroque BartleMUD BASIC Batch Bathtub Curve Baud Baud Barf Baz BBoard BBS BC Beam Beanie Key Beep Beige Toaster Bells and Whistles Bells, Whistles and Gongs Benchmark Berkeley Quality Software Berklix Berserking Berzerkeley Beta BFI Bible BiCapitalization BIFF Big Gray Wall Big Iron Big Red Switch Big Room, the Big Win Big-Endian BigNum Bigot BIOS bit Bit Bang Bit Bashing Bit Bucket Bit Decay Bit Rot Bit Twiddling Bit-paired Keyboard bitBLT BITNET bits Bitty Box Bixie BK Black Art Black Hole Black Magic Blast Blat Bletch Bletcherous Blinkenlights BLIT Blitter Blivet Blob Block Block Transfer Computations Blow an EPROM Blow Away Blow Out Blow Past Blow Up BLT Blue Book Blue Glue Blue Goo BNF Boa Board Boat Anchor Bogo Sort Bogometer Bogon Bogon Filter Bogon Flux Bogosity Bogotify Bogue Out Bogus Bohr Bug Boink Bomb Bondage And Discipline Language Bonk/Oif Book Titles Boot Bottom-up Implementation Bounce Bounce Message Box Boxed Comments Boxen Boxology Bozotic BQS Brain Dump Brain Damaged Brain Dead Braino Branch to Fishkill Brand Brand Brand Break Breath-of-Life Packet Breedle Bring X to its Knees Brittle Broadcast Storm Broken Broken Arrow Broket Brooks' Law BRS Brute Force Brute Force and Ignorance BSD Bubble Sort Bucky Bits Buffer Overflow Bug Bug-Compatible Bug-for-Bug Compatible Buglix Bulletproof Bum Bump Burble Buried Treasure Burn-in Period Burst Page Busy-Wait Buzz BWQ By Hand Byte Bytesexual
C — Cache, Cloud, CPU
C Calculator Can Canonical Card Card Walloper Careware Cargo Cult Programming Case and Paste Casters-up Mode Casting the Runes CAT Catatonic CDR Chad Chad Box Chain Chapel Char Charityware Chase Pointers Chemist Chernobyl Chicken Chernobyl Packet Chicken Head Chiclet Keyboard Chine Nual Chinese Army Technique Choke Chomp Chomper Christmas Tree Christmas Tree Packet Chrome Chug Church of the SubGenius CI$ Cinderella Book Cistercian Numerals Classic C Clean CLM Clobber Clocks Clone Cloud Clover Key Clustergeeking COBOL COBOL fingers Code Code Grinder Code Police Codewalker Coefficient Coefficient of X Cokebottle Cold Boot Collusion COME FROM Comm Mode Command Key Comment Out Commonwealth Hackish Compact Compiler Jock Compu$erve Computer Computer Confetti Computer Geek Computron Condition Out Condom Connector Conspiracy Cons Considered Harmful Console Console Jockey Content-Free Control-C Control-O Control-Q Control-S Control-V Control-X Control-Z Conway's Law Cookbook Cookie Cookie Bear Cookie File Cookie Monster Copper Copy Protection Copybroke Copyleft Copywronged Core Core Dump Core Leak Core Wars Corge Cosmic Rays Cough and Die Cowboy CP/M CPU CPU Wars Cracker Crank Crash Crash and Burn Crawling Horror Cray Cray Instability Crayola Crayon Creationism Creeping Elegance Creeping Featurism Creeping Featuritis Cretin Cretinous Crippleware Critical Mass CRLF Crock Cross-Post Crudware Cruft Cruft Together Cruftsmanship Crufty Crumb Crunch Cruncha Cruncha Cruncha Cryppie CTSS CTY Cube Cubing Cursor Dipped in X Cuspy Cut a Tape Cybercrud Cyberpunk Cyberspace Cycle Cycle Crunch Cycle Drought Cycle of Reincarnation Cycle Server
D — Data, DNS, Download
D. C. Power Lab Daemon Dangling Pointer Datamation Day Mode DD DDT De-Rezz Dead Code DEADBEEF Deadlock Deadly Embrace Death Star DEC Wars DEChead Deckle Deep Hack Mode Deep Magic Deep Space Defenestration Defined as Dehose Delint Delta Demented Demigod Demo Demo Mode Demon Depeditate Deprecated DES Deserves to Lose Desk Check Devil Book Devo Dickless Workstation Dictionary Flame Diddle Diff Digit Dike Ding Dink Dinosaur Dinosaur Pen Dinosaurs Mating Dirty Power Discordianism Discrete Logarithm Problem Disk Farm Display Hack Dissociated Press Distribution DNS Do Protocol Doc Doco Documentation Dodgy DogCow Dogwash Domainist Don't do that, then! Dongle Dongle-Disk Donuts Doorstop DOS Dot File Double Bucky Double DECkers Doubled Sig Down Download DP DPB DPer Dragon Dragon Book Drain Dread High-bit Disease DRECNET Driver Droid Drool-Proof Paper Drop on the Floor Drop Outs Drop-ins Drugged Drunk Mouse Syndrome Dumbass Attack Dumbed Down Dump Dup Killer Dup Loop Dusty Deck DWIM Dynner
E — Ethernet, Encryption, Email
Earthquake Easter Egg Easter Egging Eat Flaming Death EBCDIC Echo Eighty-Column Mind El Camino Bignum Elder Days Elegant Elephantine Elevator Controller ELIZA Effect Elvish EMACS EMail Emoticon Empire Encode Encryption Engine English Enhancement ENQ EOF EOL EOU Epoch Epsilon Epsilon Squared Era, the Eric Conspiracy Eris Erotics Essentials Evil Exa- Examining the Entrails EXCH Excl EXE Exec Exercise, Left as an Eyeball Search
F — Firewall, Firmware, File
F# Fab Face Time Factor fakebook Fall Over Fall Through Fandango on Core FAQ List FAQL Farming Fascist Faulty FD Leak Fear and Loathing Feature Feature Creature Feature Shock Featurectomy Feep Feeper Feeping Creature Feeping Creaturism Feetch Feetch Fence Fencepost Error Fepped Out FidoNet Field Circus Field Servoid Fight-O-Net File Attach File Request Filk Film at 11 Filter Finagle's Law Fine Finger Finger-Pointing Syndrome Firebottle Firefighting Firewall Code Firewall Machine Fireworks Mode Firmy Fish FISH Queue Fix Flag Flag Day Flaky Flamage Flame Flame Bait Flame On Flame War Flamer Flap Flarp Flat Flat-ASCII Flat-File Flatten Flavor Flavorful Flippy Flowchart Flower Key Flush Flyspeck 3 Flytrap FOAF FOD Fold Case Followup Foo Foobar Fool Fool File, the Foonly Footprint For Free For the Rest of Us Fora Foreground Forked Fortrash Fortune Cookie Forum Fossil Four-Color Glossies Fragile Fred FredNet Freeware Freeze Fried Friode Fritterware Frob Frobnicate Frobnitz Frog Front End Frotz Frotzed Frowney Fry FTP FUBAR FUD FUD Wars Fudge Fudge Factor Fuel Up Fuggly Funky Funny Money Fuzzball
G — GPU, Gbps, Gigabyte
G Gabriel Gag Gang Bang Garbage Collect Garply Gas Gaseous GC GCOS GECOS Gedanken Geef Geek Out Gen Gender Mender General Public Virus Generate Gensym Get a life! Get a real computer! GFR Gig Giga GIGO Gillion GIPS Glark Glass Glass TTY Glassfet Glitch Glob Glork Glue Gnarly GNU GNUMACS Go Flatline Go Root Go-Faster Stripes Gobble Godzillagram Golden Golf-Ball Printer Gonk Gonkulator Gonzo Good Thing Gorilla Arm Gorp GOSMACS Gosperism Gotcha GPL GPV GraphQL Grault Gray Goo Great Renaming Great Runes Great-Wall Green Book Green Bytes Green Card Green Lightning Green Machine Green's Theorem Grep Grind Grind Crank Gritch Grok Gronk Gronk Out Gronked Grovel Grunge Gubbish Guiltware Gumby Gun Gunch Gurfle Guru
H — HTML, HTTP, Hard Drive
H HA HA Only Serious Hack Hack Attack Hack Mode Hack On Hack Together Hack Up Hack Value Hack-and-Slay Hacked Off Hacked Up Hacker Hacking Run Hacking X for Y Hackintosh Hackish Hackishness Hackitude Hair Hairy HAKMEM HakSpek Hamster Hand-Hacking Handshaking Handwave Hang Hanlon's Razor Happily Hard Boot HardCoded Hardwarily Hardwired Has the X Nature Hash Bucket Hash Collision Hat HCF Heads Down Heartbeat Heavy Metal Heavy Wizardry Heavyweight Heisenbug Helen Keller Mode Hello, Sailor! Hello, Wall! Hello, World Hex Hexadecimal Hexit Hidden Flag High Bit High Moby Highly Hirsute HLL Hobbit Hog Holy Wars Home Box Hook Hop Hose Hosed Hot Spot House Wizard HP-SUX HTTP Huff Humma Humor, Hacker Hung Hungry Puppy Hungus Hyperspace
I — IP, ISP, IoT
I didn't change anything! I See No X Here i14y i18n IBM IBM Discount ICE IDL (Interface Definition Language) ifdef out Ill Behaved IMHO In The Extreme Incantation Include Include War Indent Style Index Infant Mortality Infinite Infinite Loop Infinity Insanely Great INTERCAL Interesting Internet Address Interrupt Interrupt List, The Interrupts Locked Out IO Iron Iron Age Iron Box Ironmonger ISBN ITS IWBNI IYFEG
J — Java, JSON, JavaScript
K — Kernel, Kubernetes, Kilobyte
L — LAN, Linux, Load Balancer
Lace Card Language Lawyer Languages of Choice Larval Stage Lase Laser Chicken Laundromat LDB Leaf Site Leak Leaky Heap Legal Legalese LER LERP Let the Smoke Out Letterbomb Lexer Lexiphage Life Light Pipe Like Kicking Dead Whales Down the Beach Like Nailing Jelly to a Tree Line Eater, the Line Starve Link Link Farm Link-Dead Lint Lion Food Lions Book LISP Literature, The Little-Endian Live Data Live Free Or Die! Livelock Liveware Lobotomy Locked and Loaded Locked Up Logic Bomb Logical Loop Through Lord High Fixer Lose Lose Lose Loser Losing Loss Lossage Lost in the Noise Lost in the Underflow Lots of MIPS but no I/O Low-Bandwidth LPT Lunatic Fringe Lurker Luser
M — Malware, Modem, Machine Learning
M MacDink Machinable Machoflops Macintoy Macintrash Macro Macrology Macrotape Maggotbox Magic Magic Cookie Magic Number Magic Smoke Mailing List Main Loop Mainframe Management Mandelbug Manged Mangle Mangler Mango Marbles Marginal Marginal Hacks Marginally Marketroid Mars Martian Massage Math-Out Matrix Mbogo, Dr. Fred Meatware Meeces Meg Mega- Megapenny MEGO Meltdown, Network Meme Meme Plague Memetics Memory Leak Menuitis Mess-DOS Meta Meta bit MFTL Mickey Mickey Mouse Program Micro- Microfloppies Microfortnight MicroLenat MicroReid Microsloth Windows Microtape Middle-Endian MilliLampson Minifloppies MIPS Misbug Misfeature Missed'em-Five Miswart Moby Mod Mode Mode bit Modula-2 Modular Exponentiation Modulo Molly-Guard Mongolian Hordes Technique Monkey Up Monstrosity Moof Moore's Law Moria MOTAS MOTOS MOTSS Mouse Ahead Mouse Around Mouse Belt Mouse Droppings Mouse Elbow Mouso MS-DOS MSDOS Mu (む) MUD Mudhead Multician Multics Multitask Mumblage Mumble Munch Munching Munching Squares Munchkin Mundane Murphy's Law Music Mutter MySQL
N — Network, Node, NTP
N Nailed to the Wall Nailing Jelly Naive Naive User NAK Nanoacre Nanobot Nanocomputer Nanofortnight Nanotechnology Nastygram Nathan Hale Nature Neat Hack Neep-Neep Neophilia Net.- Net.God Net.Personality Net.Police Nethack Netiquette Netnews Netrock Network Address Network Meltdown Network, The New Jersey New Testament Newbie Newgroup Wars Newline NeWS Newsfroup Newsgroup Nial Nickle Night Mode Nightmare File System NIL NIST NMI No-Op Noddy NOMEX Underwear Non-Optimal Solution Nonlinear Nontrivial Notwork NP- NSA Line Eater Nuke Number-Crunching Numbers NUXI Problem Nybble Nyetwork
O — OS, Opcode, Open Source
Ob- Obfuscated C Contest Obi-Wan Error Objectionable-C Obscure Octal Forty Off The Trolley Off-by-one Error Offline Old Fart Old Testament One-line Fix One-liner Wars Ooblick Open Open Switch Operating System Orange Book Oriental Food Orphan Orphaned i-Node Orthogonal OS OS/2 Out-of-Band Overflow bit Overflow-Screw Overrun Overrun Screw
P — Processor, Protocol, Packet
P.O.D. Padded Cell Page In Page Out Pain in the Net Paper-Net Param Parent Message Parity Errors Parkinson's Law of Data Parm Parse Pascal Patch Patch Space Path Pathological Payware PBD PC PC-ism PD PDL PDP-10 PDP-20 Peek Pen Pencil and Paper Peon Percent-S Perf Perfect Programmer Syndrome Perl Pessimal Pessimizing Compiler Peta- PETSCII Phase Phase of the Moon Phreaking Pico- Pig, Run like a Pilot Error Ping Pink-Shirt Book PIP Pistol Pizza Box Pizza, ANSI standard Plain-ASCII Plan File Platinum-Iridium Playpen Playte Plingnet PLOKTA Plonk Plugh Plumbing PM PNAMBIC PoD Poke Poll Polygon Pusher POM POP POPJ Posing Post Posting Postmaster Pound On Power Cycle PPN Precedence Lossage Prepend Prestidigitization Pretty Pictures Prettyprint Pretzel Key Prime Time Priority Interrupt Profile Proglet Program Programmer Programmer's Cheer Programming Propeller Head Propeller Key Proper Procedure Proprietary Protocol Provocative Maintenance Prowler Pseudo Pseudoprime Pseudosuit Psychedelicware Psyton Pubic Directory Puff Punched Card Punt Purple Book PUSH PW PPN
Q — QoS, Queue, QWERTY
R — RAM, Router, RAID
Rain Dance RAM Random Random Numbers Randomness Rape Rare Mode Raster Blaster Raster Burn Rat Belt Rave Rave On! Ravs Raw Mode RC File RE Read-Only User README File Real Estate Real Hack Real Operating System Real Programmer Real Soon Now Real Time Real User Real World Reality Check Reaper Rectangle Slinger Recursion Recursive Acronym Red Book regexp Reincarnation, Cycle of Reinvent the Wheel Religious Issues Replicator Reply Reset Restriction Retcon RETI Retrocomputing RFC RFE Rib Site Rice Box Right Thing RL Roach Robust Rococo Rogue Room-Temperature IQ Root Mode ROT13 Rotary Debugger RSN RTFAQ RTFM RTI RTM Rude Runes Runic Rusty Iron Rusty Memory
S — Server, Software, SEO
S/N Ratio Sacred Saga Sagan SAIL Salescritter Salsman Salt Mines Salt Substrate Same-Day Service Sandbender Sandbox Sanity Check Saturday Night Special Say Science-Fiction Fandom Scram Switch Scratch Scratch Monkey Screw Screwage Scribble Scrog Scrool Scrozzle SCSI Search-and-Destroy Mode Second-System Effect Secondary Damage Security Through Obscurity SED Segfault Seggie Segment Segmentation Fault SegV Self-Reference Selvage Semi Semi-Infinite Senior bit SEO: Search Engine Optimization Server SEX Sex Changer Shareware Shelfware Shell Shell Out Shift Left (or Right) Logical Shitogram Short Card Shotgun Debugging Showstopper Shriek Shub-Internet Sidecar Sig Block Sig Quote Signal-to-Noise Ratio Signatures and Authentication Silicon Silicon Foundry Silly Walk Silo Silver Book Since Time T Equals Minus Infinity Site Sitename Skrog Skulker Slap on the Side Slash Sleep Slim Slop Slopsucker Slurp Smart Smart Terminal Smash Case Smash the Stack Smiley Smoke Test Smoking Clover SMOP SNAFU Principle Snail Snail-Mail Snap Snarf Snarf & Barf Snark Sneakernet Sniff Snivitz SO SOAP Social Science Number Soft Boot Softcopy Software Bloat Software Rot Softwarily Softy Some Random X Sorcerer's Apprentice Mode SOS Source of All Good bits Space-Cadet Keyboard SPACEWAR Spaghetti Code Spaghetti Inheritance Spam Special-Case Speedometer Spell Spiffy Spin SPL Splat Sponge Spooge Spool SSH Stack Stack Puke Stale Pointer Bug State Steam-Powered Stiffy Stir-Fried Random Stomp On Stone Age Stoppage Store Stroke Structured Query Language Strudel Stubroutine Studlycaps Stunning Stupid-sort Subshell Sucking Mud Sufficiently Small Suit Suitable Win Suitably Small Sun-Stools Sunspots Superprogrammer Superuser Support Suzie COBOL Swab Swap Swap Space Swapped In Swapped Out Swizzle Sync Syntactic Sugar Sys-Frog SysAdmin SysOp System System Mangler Systems Jock SysVile
T — TCP/IP, Token, Thread
T Tail Recursion Talk Mode Talker System Tall Card Tanked Tar and Feather Taste Tayste TCB Tea, ISO Standard Cup of TechRef TECO Tee Telerat TELNET Ten-Finger Interface Tense Tenured Graduate Student Tera- Teraflop Club Terminak Terminal Brain Death Terminal Illness Terminal Junkie Terpri Test TeX Text Thanks in Advance The X that can be Y is not the True X Theology Theory Thinko This time, for sure! Thrash Thread Three-Finger Salute Thud Thunk Tick Tick-List Features Tickle a Bug Tiger Team Time Sink Time T Times-or-Divided-by Tinycrud Tip of the Ice-Cube Tired Iron Tits on a Keyboard TLA TMRC To a First Approximation To a Zeroth Approximation Toast Toaster Toeprint Toggle Tool Toolsmith Topic Drift Topic Group TOPS-10 TOPS-20 Toto Tourist Tourist Information Touristic Toy Toy Language Toy Problem Toy Program Trampoline Trap Trap Door Trash Tree-Killer Trit Trivial Troglodyte Troglodyte Mode Trojan Horse True-Hacker TTY Tube Tube Time Tunafish Tune Turbo Nerd Turist Tweak TWENEX Twiddle Twink Two Pi Two-to-the-N Twonkie
U — USB, URL, Unix
V — VPN, VR, Virus
Vadding Vanilla Vannevar Vaporware Var VAX VAXectomy VAXen Vaxherd Vaxism Vaxocentrism VDiff Veeblefester Venus Flytrap Verbage Verbiage Version 7 Vgrep VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) VI Videotex Virgin Virtual Virtual Friday Virtual Reality Virus Visionary VMS Voice Voice-Net Voodoo Programming VR Vulcan Nerve Pinch Vulture Capitalist
W — Wi‑Fi, Web, Wireless LAN
Wabbit Wad WAITS Waldo Walk Walk Off the End of Walking Drives Wall Wall Follower Wall Time Wallpaper Wango Wank Wannabee Warm Boot Wart Washing Machine Water MIPS WATFIV (Waterloo Fortran IV) Wave a Dead Chicken Weasel WebDAV WebSocket Wedged Wedgie Wedgitude Weeble Weeds Weenie Weenix Well-Behaved Well-Connected Wetware Whacker Whales What Wheel Wheel bit Wheel Wars White Book Whizzy WIBNI Widget Wiggles WIMP Environment Win Win Big Win Win Winchester Winged Comments Winkey Winnage Winner Winnitude Wired Wirehead Wish List Within Delta of Within Epsilon of Wizard Wizard Book Wizard Mode Wizardly Womb Box WOMBAT Wonky WordPress Workaround Working as Designed Worm Wound Around the Axle Wrap Around Write-Only Code Write-Only Language Write-Only Memory Wrong Thing Wugga Wugga WWW WYSIWYG