GNU -- G'no way...

Seth Gordon sgordon at kenan.com
Tue Feb 22 11:23:05 EST 2000


English majors should appreciate a citation from an authoritative reference
work -- in this case, version 4.2.0 of the Jargon Lexicon (aka the Hackers'
Dictionary):


> ::recursive acronym:: n.
>
> A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose
> acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other
> acronyms/abbreviations. The classic examples were two MIT editors called
> EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More
> recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply
> Recursively), and ::GNU:: (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not Unix!" --
> and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU
> Support" (though Cygnus people say this is a ::backronym::). See also
> ::mung::, ::EMACS::.

--
perl -le"for(@w=(q[dm='r 0rJaa,u0cksthe';dc=967150;dz=~s/d/substrdm,\
(di+=dc%2?4:1)%=16,1ordi-2?'no':'Perl h'/e whiledc>>=1;printdz]))\
{s/d/chr(36)/eg;eval;}#In Windows type this all on 1 line w/o '\'s"
== seth gordon == sgordon at kenan.com == standard disclaimer ==
== documentation group, kenan systems corp., cambridge, ma ==


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