bubble sort
 n.

    Techspeak for a particular sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent
    values in the list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are
    out of order; thus, list entries ?bubble upward? in the list until they
    bump into one with a lower sort value. Because it is not very good relative
    to other methods and is the one typically stumbled on by naive and
    untutored programmers, hackers consider it the canonical example of a
    naive algorithm. (However, it's been shown by repeated experiment that
    below about 5000 records bubble-sort is OK anyway.) The canonical example
    of a really bad algorithm is bogo-sort. A bubble sort might be used out
    of ignorance, but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage
    or willful perversity.

bubble sort

   A sorting technique in which pairs of adjacent values in the
   list to be sorted are compared and interchanged if they are
   out of order; thus, list entries "bubble upward" in the list
   until they bump into one with a lower sort value.  Because it
   is not very good relative to other methods and is the one
   typically stumbled on by naive and untutored programmers,
   hackers consider it the canonical example of a naive
   algorithm.  The canonical example of a really *bad* algorithm
   is bogo-sort.  A bubble sort might be used out of ignorance,
   but any use of bogo-sort could issue only from brain damage or
   willful perversity.

   [Jargon File]