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| Machine-Independent | adj | Does not run on any existing machine. |
| macho | adj | Jogging home from your vasectomy. |
| Macintosh | n | MACINTOSH: Computer with training wheels you can't remove. |
| Mad | adj |
Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Madam | n | One who offers vice to the lovelorn. |
| Madison's Inquiry | n | If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class? |
| MAFIA | n |
[Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" |
| Magary's Principle | n | When there is a public outcry to cut deadwood and fat from any government bureaucracy, it is the deadwood and the fat that do the cutting, and the public's services are cut. |
| Magnet | n |
Something acted upon by magnetism.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Magnetism | n |
Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of
one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with
a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Magnocartic | adj |
Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" |
| Magpie | n |
A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Maiden | n | A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the canary -- which, also, is more portable. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| maiden aunt | n | A girl who never had the sense to say "uncle." |
| Maier's Law | n |
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
-- N.R. Maier, "American Psychologist", March 1960 Corollaries: (1) The bigger the theory, the better. (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. |
| Main's Law | n | For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. |
| Maintainer's Motto | n | If we can't fix it, it ain't broke. |
| Major premise | n |
Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise: A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds. Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Secondary Conclusion: Do you realize how many holes there would be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them? |
| Majority | n | That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law. |
| Male | n |
(1) A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the
human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The genus
has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (2) Life support system for a cock. See also female |
| Malek's Law | n | Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way. |
| malpractice | n | The reason surgeons wear masks. |
| Man | n | An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| man-hour | n | A sexist, obsolete measure of macho effort, equal to 60 Kiplings. |
| management | n | The art of getting other people to do all the work. |
| manic-depressive | adj | Easy glum, easy glow. |
| Manly's Maxim | n | Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. |
| manual | n |
A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given
item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information
you need in in the others.
-- Ray Simard |
| Marconi | n | The first man to send a message through a length of spaghetti without it touching the sides. |
| Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery | n | Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer. |
| marriage | n |
(1) An old, established institution, entered into by two people deeply
in love and desiring to make a committment to each other expressing
that love. In short, committment to an institution.
(2) Convertible bonds. (3) The evil aye. |
| Marxist Law of Distribution of Wealth | n | Shortages will be divided equally among the peasants. |
| Maryann's Law | n | You can always find what you're not looking for. |
| Maslow's Maxim | n | If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail. |
| Mason's First Law of Synergism | n | The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut. |
| masturbation | n |
(1) A self-service elevator.
(2) Coming unscrewed. (3) Don't knock masturbation, after all, it's making love to someone you deeply admire -- Woody Allen |
| mathematician | n | Some one who believes imaginary things appear right before your i's. |
| Matz's Law | n | A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. |
| May's Law | n | The quality of correlation is inversly proportional to the density of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.) |
| McEwan's Rule of Relative Importance | n | When traveling with a herd of elephants, don't be the first to lie down and rest. |
| McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom | n | If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95. |
| Meade's Maxim | n | Always remember that you are absolutely unique, just like everyone else. |
| Meader's Law | n | Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so. |
| Medical Staff | n | A doctor's cane. |
| meeting | n |
(1) An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
(2) A place where minutes are kept and hours are lost. |
| Megabyte | v | What Broome mozzies do. See also Byte and bit (2) |
| memo | n | An interoffice communication too often written more for the benefit of the person who sends it than the person who receives it. |
| menage a trois | n | Using both hands to masturbate. |
| Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American | n | All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. |
| Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American | n | The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. |
| Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American | n | The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. |
| Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American | n | Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can never hope to acquire it. |
| Menu | n | A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of. |
| Meskimen's Law | n | There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. |
| meterologist | n |
(1) One who doubts the established fact that it is
bound to rain if you forget your umbrella.
(2) A man who can look in a woman's eyes and predict whether. |
| Micro Credo | n | Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift. |
| micro | adj | Thinker toys. |
| Miksch's Law | n | If a string has one end, then it has another end. |
| Miller's Slogan | n | Lose a few, lose a few. |
| millihelen | n | The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. |
| Mine Shaft | n | What a German calls his penis. |
| Minicomputer | n | A computer that can be afforded on the budget of a middle-level manager. |
| Minor Operation | n | Coal digging. |
| MIPS | n | Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed |
| Misfortune | n |
The kind of fortune that never misses.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Miss | n |
A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Missionary Position | n | The missionary on top. |
| Mistress | n | Something between a mister and a mattress. |
| MIT | n | The Georgia Tech of the North |
| Mitchell's Law of Committees | n | Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. |
| mittsquinter | adj |
A ballplayer who looks into his glove after missing the ball, as
if, somehow, the cause of the error lies there.
-- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends |
| Mix's Law | n |
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary building.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax. |
| mixed emotions | n |
(1) Watching a bus-load of lawyers plunge off a cliff.
With five empty seats. (2) Watching your mother-in-law back off a cliff... in your brand new Mercedes. |
| Mod | adj | A squad on TV in the sixties. |
| The Modelski Chain Rule | n |
(1) Look intently at the problem for several minutes. Scratch your
head at 20-30 second intervals. Try solving the problem on your
Hewlett-Packard.
(2) Failing this, look around at the class. Select a particularly bright-looking individual. (3) Procure a large chain. (4) Walk over to the selected student and threaten to beat him severely with the chain unless he gives you the answer to the problem. Generally, he will. It may also be a good idea to give him a sound thrashing anyway, just to show you mean business. |
| modem | adj |
Up-to-date, new-fangled, as in "Thoroughly Modem Millie." An
unfortunate byproduct of kerning.
[That's sic!] |
| modesty | n |
(1) Being comfortable that others will discover your greatness.
(2) The gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. -- Oliver Herford |
| Molecule | n |
The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
atom in that it is an ion ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis | n | If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. |
| Mom's Law | n | When they finally do have to take you to the hospital, your underwear won't be clean or new. |
| momentum | n | What you give a person when they are going away. |
| Monday | n |
In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |
| Monitor | v | Keeping an eye on the barbie. See also Log On, Log Off, Download and Floppy Disc |
| Monologue | n | A discussion between man and wife. |
| monotony | n | Marriage to one woman at a time. |
| Montana | n |
(1) A grizzly bear praying for the early arrival of cable television.
(2) Where forty-three below keeps out the riff-raff. (3) Where men are men and women are sheep. |
| Moon | n | 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC). |
| Moore's Constant | n | Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do. |
| mophobia | n | Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian. |
| Morbid | adj | A higher offer. |
| Morton's Law | n | If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. |
| Mosher's Law of Software Engineering | n | Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job. |
| mosquito | n | The state bird of New Jersey. |
| mother | n | Half a word. |
| Motherboard | n | When your mother lives with you. |
| Motto of the Electrical Engineer | n | Working computer hardware is a lot like an erect penis: it stays up as long as you don't f*** with it. |
| MOZ DONG | n | Curtation of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, as performed by the computerized billing ensemble of the Internat'l Preview Society, Great Neck (sic), N.Y. See also curtation -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" |
| MP3 | n | The third politician. |
| Mr. Cole's Axiom | n | The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. |
| Multitasking | adj | Screwing up several things at once. |
| mummy | n | An Egyptian who was pressed for time. |
| Murphy's Discovery | n | Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in trouble! |
| Murphy's Laws | pl, n |
(1) If anything can go wrong, it will.
(2) Nothing is as easy as it looks. (3) Everything takes longer than you think it will. |
| Murphy's Law of Research | n | Enough research will tend to support your theory. |
| Murray's Rule | n | Any country with "democratic" in the title isn't. |
| Mustgo | n |
Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
long it has become a science project.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" |
| mythology | n |
The body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin,
early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" |