big-endian
 adj.

    [common; From Swift's Gulliver's Travels via the famous paper On Holy Wars
    and a Plea for Peace by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, dated April 1, 1980]

    1. Describes a computer architecture in which, within a given multi-byte
    numeric representation, the most significant byte has the lowest address
    (the word is stored ?big-end-first?). Most processors, including the IBM
    370 family, the PDP-10, the Motorola microprocessor families, and most of
    the various RISC designs are big-endian. Big-endian byte order is also
    sometimes called network order. See little-endian, middle-endian, NUXI
    problem, swab.

    2. An Internet address the wrong way round. Most of the world follows the
    Internet standard and writes email addresses starting with the name of the
    computer and ending up with the name of the country. In the U.K.: the Joint
    Academic Networking Team had decided to do it the other way round before
    the Internet domain standard was established. Most gateway sites have 
    ad-hockery in their mailers to handle this, but can still be confused. In
    particular, the address [email protected] could be interpreted in
    JANET's big-endian way as one in the U.K. (domain uk) or in the standard
    little-endian way as one in the domain as (American Samoa) on the opposite
    side of the world.

big-endian

   1.  A computer architecture in which,
   within a given multi-byte numeric representation, the most
   significant byte has the lowest address (the word is stored
   "big-end-first").

   Most processors, including the IBM 370 family, the PDP-10,
   the Motorola microprocessor families, and most of the
   various RISC designs current in mid-1993, are big-endian.

   See -endian.

   2.  A backward electronic mail
   address.  The world now follows the Internet hostname
   standard (see FQDN) and writes e-mail addresses starting
   with the name of the computer and ending up with the country
   code (e.g. [email protected]).  In the United Kingdom the
   Joint Networking Team decided to do it the other way round
   (e.g. [email protected]) before the Internet domain
   standard was established.  Most gateway sites required
   ad-hockery in their mailers to handle this.

   By July 1994 this parochial idiosyncracy was on the way out
   and mailers started to reject big-endian addresses.  By about
   1996, people would look at you strangely if you suggested such
   a bizarre thing might ever have existed.

   [Jargon File]

   (1998-08-09)