May 15, 2003

hysterical reasons

n.

(also hysterical raisins) A variant on the stock phrase for historical reasons, indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backwards compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. All IBM PC video adapters have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons. Compare bug-for-bug compatible.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:42 AM

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