Verb Doubling
Prev | Chapter 4. Jargon Construction | Next

## 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.

Prev | Up | Next
Chapter 4. Jargon Construction | Home | Soundalike Slang