The letter L

• lace card n. obs. A punched card with all holes punched
• language lawyer n. A person, usually an experienced or senior
• languages of choice n. C and LISP. Nearly every
• larval stage n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration
• lase /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer.
• laser chicken n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish
• Lasherism [Harvard] n. A program that solves a standard problem
• laundromat n. Syn. disk farm; see washing machine.
• LDB /l*'d*b/ [from the PDP-10 instruction set] vt. To extract
• leaf site n. A machine that merely originates and reads USENET
• leak n. With qualifier, one of a class of resource-management bugs
• leaky heap [Cambridge] n. An arena with a memory leak.
• leapfrog attack n. Use of userid and password information
• legal adj. Loosely used to mean `in accordance with all the
• legalese n. Dense, pedantic verbiage in a language description,
• LER /L-E-R/ [TMRC, from `Light-Emitting Diode'] n. A
• LERP /lerp/ vi.,n. Quasi-acronym for Linear Interpolation, used as a
• let the smoke out v. To fry hardware (see fried). See
• letterbomb 1. n. A piece of email containing live data
• lexer /lek'sr/ n. Common hacker shorthand for `lexical
• lexiphage /lek'si-fayj`/ n. A notorious word chomper on
• life n. 1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton
• Life is hard [XEROX PARC] prov. This phrase has two possible
• light pipe n. Fiber optic cable. Oppose copper.
• lightweight adj. Opposite of heavyweight; usually found in
• like kicking dead whales down the beach adj. Describes a slow,
• like nailing jelly to a tree adj. Used to describe a task thought
• line 666 [from Christian eschatological myth] n. The notional
• line eater, the [USENET] n. 1. A bug in some now-obsolete
• line noise n. 1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to
• line starve [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the
• link farm [UNIX] n. A directory tree that contains many links to
• link-dead [MUD] adj. Said of a MUD character who has frozen in
• lint [from UNIX's `lint(1)', named for the bits of fluff it
• lion food [IBM] n. Middle management or HQ staff (or, by
• Lions Book n. "Source Code and Commentary on UNIX level 6",
• LISP [from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from
• literature, the n. Computer-science journals and other
• lithium lick n. [NeXT] n. Steve Jobs. Employees who have gotten
• little-endian adj. Describes a computer architecture in which,
• live data n. 1. Data that is written to be interpreted and takes
• Live Free Or Die! imp. 1. The state motto of New Hampshire, which
• livelock /liv'lok/ n. A situation in which some critical stage
• liveware /liv'weir/ n. 1. Synonym for wetware. Less
• lobotomy n. 1. What a hacker subjected to formal management
• locals, the pl.n. The users on one's local network (as opposed, say,
• locked and loaded [from military slang for an M-16 rifle with
• locked up adj. Syn. for hung, wedged.
• logic bomb n. Code surreptitiously inserted into an application or
• logical [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a
• loop through vt. To process each element of a list of things.
• loose bytes n. Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or
• lord high fixer [primarily British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's
• lose [MIT] vi. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters
• lose lose interj. A reply to or comment on an undesirable
• loser n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or
• losing adj. Said of anything that is or causes a lose or
• loss n. Something (not a person) that loses; a situation in which
• lossage /los'*j/ n. The result of a bug or malfunction. This
• lost in the noise adj. Syn. lost in the underflow. This term
• lost in the underflow adj. Too small to be worth considering;
• lots of MIPS but no I/O adj. Used to describe a person who is
• low-bandwidth [from communication theory] adj. Used to indicate a
• LPT /L-P-T/ or /lip'it/ or /lip-it'/ n. Line printer, of
• Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology prov. "There is *always*
• lunatic fringe [IBM] n. Customers who can be relied upon to accept
• lurker n. One of the `silent majority' in a electronic forum;
• luser /loo'zr/ n. A user; esp. one who is also a

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The letter M