Describes the behavior of a program that malfunctions and goes
catatonic, but doesn't actually crash or abort. See
glitch, bug,
deep space, wedged.
This term is much older than computing, and is (uncommon) slang
elsewhere. A trolley is the small wheel that trolls, or runs against, the
heavy wire that carries the current to run a streetcar. It's at the end of
the long pole (the trolley pole) that reaches from the roof of the
streetcar to the overhead line. When the trolley stops making contact with
the wire (from passing through a switch, going over bumpy track, or
whatever), the streetcar comes to a halt, (usually) without crashing. The
streetcar is then said to be off the trolley, or off the wire. Later on,
trolley came to mean the streetcar itself. Since streetcars became common
in the 1890s, the term is more than 100 years old. Nowadays, trolleys are
only seen on historic streetcars, since modern streetcars use pantographs
to contact the wire.
