[common Iron Age jargon, preserved by Unix]
1. [techspeak] A copy of the contents of core, produced when a process is aborted by certain kinds of internal error.
2. By extension, used for humans passing out, vomiting, or
registering extreme shock. He dumped core. All over the floor.
What a mess.
He heard about X and dumped
core.
3. Occasionally used for a human rambling on pointlessly at great
length; esp. in apology: Sorry, I dumped core on you
.
4. A recapitulation of knowledge (compare
bits, sense 1). Hence, spewing all one knows about
a topic (syn. brain dump), esp. in a lecture or
answer to an exam question. Short, concise answers are better than
core dumps
(from the instructions to an exam at Columbia). See
core.
A core dump lands our hero in hot water.
(This is the last cartoon in the Crunchly saga.)