A Twittering of Birds: The Inscrutable World of Jargon

By Mr Ghaz, November 28, 2009

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A Twittering of Birds: The Inscrutable World of Jargon

Originally a French word meaning “the twittering of birds,” jargon, in English, was applied to the codes used by criminals who did not want law-abiding citizens to know what they were saying.

Today jargon words are coined not to confuse outsiders but because the objects, jobs, or situations they describe may have no equivalents outside a particular profession.

Computer Language

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In the fast growing computer industry, new words are born almost as fast as the machines come off the production line. Terms such as bit, byte, and nybble (half a byte) are now fairly common, but there are many less familiar ones.

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Originally, homemade computers were nicknamed kludge, which may have been derived from klug – German for clever. Today some people use the word as a term of endearment for a computer, especially enthusiasts.

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The opposite of kludge – a large, unfriendly piece of computer equipment – might be called a moby, probably for the dangerous white whale in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick.

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Data assembled in such a computer might well be destroyed, or MUNG –ed (“mussed until no good”). It may be necessary to gronk, or free, a jammed computer. But an operator who tells you about his “flops” is not describing setbacks but “floating point operations per second,” a method of measuring the power of a supercomputer.

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Some of the easiest computer to use employ devices known as WIMP’s an acronym for win – downs/icons/mouse/pull – down menu. And “win – downs” are the areas on a computer screen in which graphic representations of certain functions are displayer – for example, a trash can to symbolize the disposal of data. With some computer the “mouse,” or pointer, is used to select the needed function; and a list of operations may be seen on the screen by “puling down a menu.”

Movie madness

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It is not only the real world of computers that makes use of jargon. At the end of a detective movie, usually the villain is caught, the red herrings explained, and the hero and heroine united. But for many the mystery may just be beginning. As the credits roll, some strange terms may appear on the screen. What is a gaffer? A best boy? A key grip?

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Like many professions, the movie and television industries have their own jargon, a very private language often impenetrable to outsiders. A gaffer is, in fact, the chief electrician. The word is derived from granfer, or grandfather; it came to mean “foreman” before acquiring its present-day use on a movie set.

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A best boy assists a gaffer, or a key grip-someone whose strength or gripping power is important because he erects and dismantles scenery or puts down the tracks on which the camera can move. A gaffer should not be confused with a gofer, an apprentice so called because he is constantly told to “go for this,” “go for that.”

Cover of Moby Dick

Movieland jargon does not stop with the production team. There are many terms relating to distribution and publicity. For instance, a highly successful film may be known as a “gorilla,” a heavyweight. It may even be fortunate enough to have “legs,” or staying power, in other words, it is a film that will “run and run.”

Social Practice

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Back in the real world, sociologists and the media have invented some terms of identify groups of people who share certain patterns of behavior. Some of the terms are euphemisms, such as POSSLQ (pronounced “puzzlecue”), an acronym for “person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.” This term is used U.S. Bureau of the Census to describe a man and a woman living in what sociologists have termed “couplehood.”

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Researchers studying poor communities have devised words such as slurb dweller: a California term that is derived from “slum” and “suburban,” hence one who lives in a suburban slum.

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The 1980’s saw the emergence of yuppies – “young urban professional people,” who might be further identified as drinks, a term meaning “dual income, no kids,” which is applied to professional, childless couple with much discretionary income. Yuppie couples who do have children could also be taffies, members of a technologically advanced family – a wealthy household with a home computer and many other electronic appliances.

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Even people who drop out of conventional society cannot escape the sociologists’ labels. If they decide to leave full-time employment to work for themselves, they may become droppies, “disillusioned, relatively ordinary professionals preferring independent employment situations.”