the Jargon File

hackingprogramming

The long-running community dictionary of hacker slang and culture, maintained since the 1970s.

Begun at Stanford in 1975 and later edited into "The New Hacker's Dictionary", the Jargon File is where much of this vocabulary is recorded and its etymology argued. It is a primary source for hacker lore, and a reminder that this culture has always documented itself.

The Jargon File began at Stanford in 1975 as a collection of the slang used in a handful of artificial intelligence labs, passed between institutions, and was later edited into The New Hacker's Dictionary. It is where a great deal of the vocabulary this glossary documents was first written down.

Its value is anthropological rather than merely lexical. The entries record not just what words meant but what the community valued: precision, cleverness, contempt for bureaucracy, and a particular strain of humour that assumes the reader is smart. Reading it is the closest available thing to overhearing a technical culture before it knew it was one.

It is also genuinely contested, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Eric Raymond's editorship substantially reshaped later editions, adding material and a political framing that earlier contributors disputed, and some argue the published dictionary reflects his views more than the original community's. That controversy is itself instructive: a document recording a culture becomes a claim about that culture, and whoever holds the pen is making it.

Also known as: jargon file, hacker's dictionary, hackers dictionary

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