On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, PG Manney wrote:
> Is VAXen the plural of VAX ? Why?
Play on words. Like the plural of 'Ox' is 'Oxen', plurals of many things
involving computers that end in 'x' end in 'xen'. As VAXen, Unixen (for
the many variations on the Unix OS such as Venix, Linux, BSD, Solaris,
AIX, Xenix, and several others. You'll also see more than one box (as in
CPU) referred to as 'boxen'. Check out _The New Hacker's Dictionary_,
2nd Edition, from MIT Press, also available in many forms on the Net as
the "Jargon File". Currently (and for a long time now) maintained by
Eric S. Raymond. Try <
http://www2.dictionary.com/dictionary.jargon/>.
(Actually, recommended to everybody who ever wonders what one of us old
farts is talking about).
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
Received on Sun Jun 29 1997 - 17:27:53 BST