[WPI]
1. v. To
hack, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards,
one who gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center
punching cards or crashing the PDP-10 or, later, the
DEC-20. A correspondent who was there at the time opines that the term was
originally onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint
terminals long connected to the PDP-10; others allege that
‘gweep’ was the sound of the Datapoint's bell (compare
feep). The term has survived the demise of those
technologies, however, and was still alive in early 1999. I'm going
to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning.
I gweep
from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week.
2. n. One who habitually gweeps
in sense 1; a hacker. He's a hard-core
gweep, mumbles code in his sleep.
Around 1979 this was considered
derogatory and not used in self-reference; it has since been proudly
claimed in much the same way as geek.