Welcome to The Hacker's Dictionary, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.

• Introduction: The purpose and scope of this File
• A Few Terms: Of Slang, Jargon and Techspeak
• Revision History: How the File came to be

• With frames or without frames: The Hacker's Dictionary

• Appendix A: Hacker Folklore
• Appendix B: A Portrait of J. Random Hacker
• Appendix C: Helping Hacker Culture Grow
• Bibliography: For your further enjoyment

• Jargon Construction: How hackers invent jargon
• Hacker Writing Style: How they write
• Email Quotes: And the Inclusion Problem
• Hacker Speech Style: How hackers talk
• International Style: Some notes on usage outside the U.S.
• Lamer-speak: Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers

• Pronunciation Guide: How to read the pronunciation keys
• Other Lexicon Conventions: How to read lexicon entries
• Format for New Entries: How to submit new entries for the File

The Hacker's Dictionary is a common heritage of the hacker culture. Over the years a number of individuals have volunteered considerable time to maintaining the File and been recognized by the net at large as editors of it. Editorial responsibilities include: to collate contributions and suggestions from others; to seek out corroborating information; to cross-reference related entries; to keep the file in a consistent format; and to announce and distribute updated versions periodically. Current volunteer editors include:

Eric Raymond esr@snark.thyrsus.com

All contributions and suggestions about this file sent to a volunteer editor are gratefully received and will be regarded, unless otherwise labelled, as freely given donations for possible use as part of this public-domain file.

This document (The Hacker's Dictionary) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time. (Examples of appropriate citation form: "Hacker's Dictionary 4.3.0" or "The on-line Hacker's Dictionary, version 4.3.0, 30 APR 2001".)