Jargon Construction
Soundalike Slang
Verb Doubling
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.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.