May 15, 2003

deflicted

[portmanteau of defective and afflicted; common among PC repair technicians, and probably originated among hardware techs outside the hacker community proper] Term used of hardware that is broken due to poor design or shoddy manufacturing or (especially) both; less frequently used of software and rarely of people. This term is normally employed in a tone of weary contempt by technicians who have seen the specific failure in the trouble report before and are cynically confident they'll see it again. Ultimately this may derive from Frank Zappa's 1974 album Apostrophe, on which the Fur Trapper infamously rubs his deflicted eyes...

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:51 AM

Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?