A standard construction in English is to double a verb and use it as an
exclamation, such as “Bang, bang!” or “Quack,
quack!”. Most of these are names for noises. Hackers also double
verbs as a concise, sometimes sarcastic comment on what the implied subject
does. Also, a doubled verb is often used to terminate a conversation, in the
process remarking on the current state of affairs or what the speaker intends
to do next. Typical examples involve win,
lose, hack,
flame, barf,
chomp:
“The disk heads just crashed.” “Lose,
lose.”
“Mostly he talked about his latest crock. Flame,
flame.”
“Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!
Some verb-doubled constructions have special meanings not immediately
obvious from the verb. These have their own listings in the lexicon.
The Usenet culture has one
tripling convention unrelated to this; the names of
‘joke’ topic groups often have a tripled last element. The first
and paradigmatic example was alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (a
Muppet Show reference); other infamous examples have
included:
alt.french.captain.borg.borg.borg
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die
comp.unix.internals.system.calls.brk.brk.brk
sci.physics.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom
alt.sadistic.dentists.drill.drill.drill
These two traditions fuse in the newsgroup alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, devoted to
humor based on deliberately confounding parts of speech. Several observers
have noted that the contents of this group is excellently representative of
the peculiarities of hacker humor.
