Crash

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The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

crash

Usage: n. esp. v. vi. See Also: down, gronk out

crash: n. esp. v. vi.

1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what happens when the air gap of a hard disk collapses). "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash that involves the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a head crash, whereas the term system crash usually, though not always, implies that the operating system or other software was at fault.
2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?" "Something crashed the OS!" See down. Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing SPACEWAR crashed the system."
3. vi. Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long hacking run; see gronk out.

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