bug
    n 1: general term for any insect or similar creeping or crawling
         invertebrate
    2: a fault or defect in a computer program, system, or machine
       [syn: bug, glitch]
    3: a small hidden microphone; for listening secretly
    4: insects with sucking mouthparts and forewings thickened and
       leathery at the base; usually show incomplete metamorphosis
       [syn: hemipterous insect, bug, hemipteran,
       hemipteron]
    5: a minute life form (especially a disease-causing bacterium);
       the term is not in technical use [syn: microbe, bug,
       germ]
    v 1: annoy persistently; "The children teased the boy because of
         his stammer" [syn: tease, badger, pester, bug,
         beleaguer]
    2: tap a telephone or telegraph wire to get information; "The
       FBI was tapping the phone line of the suspected spy"; "Is
       this hotel room bugged?" [syn: wiretap, tap, intercept,
       bug]

Bug \Bug\ (b[u^]g), n. [OE. bugge, fr. W. bwg, bwgan, hobgoblin,
   scarecrow, bugbear. Cf. Bogey, Boggle.]
   1. A bugbear; anything which terrifies. [Obs.]
      [1913 Webster]

            Sir, spare your threats:
            The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
                                                  --Shak.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. (Zool.) A general name applied to various insects
      belonging to the Hemiptera; as, the squash bug; the chinch
      bug, etc.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. (Zool.) An insect of the genus Cimex, especially the
      bedbug (Cimex lectularius). See Bedbug.
      [1913 Webster]

   4. (Zool.) One of various species of Coleoptera; as, the
      ladybug; potato bug, etc.; loosely, any beetle.
      [1913 Webster]

   5. (Zool.) One of certain kinds of Crustacea; as, the sow
      bug; pill bug; bait bug; salve bug, etc.
      [1913 Webster]

   Note: According to popular usage in England and among
         housekeepers in America around 1900, bug, when not
         joined with some qualifying word, was used specifically
         for bedbug. As a general term it is now used very
         loosely in America as a colloquial term to mean any
         small crawling thing, such as an insect or arachnid,
         and was formerly used still more loosely in England.
         "God's rare workmanship in the ant, the poorest bug
         that creeps." --Rogers (--Naaman). "This bug with
         gilded wings." --Pope.
         [1913 Webster +PJC]

   6. (Computers) An error in the coding of a computer program,
      especially one causing the program to malfunction or fail.
      See, for example, year 2000 bug. "That's not a bug, it's
      a feature!"
      [PJC]

   7. Any unexpected defect or flaw, such as in a machine or a
      plan.
      [PJC]

   8. A hidden electronic listening device, used to hear or
      record conversations surreptitiously.
      [PJC]

   9. An infectious microorganism; a germ[4]. [Colloq.]
      [PJC]

   10. An undiagnosed illness, usually mild, believed to be
       caused by an infectious organism. [Colloq.]

   Note: In some communities in the 1990's, the incidence of
         AIDS is high and AIDS is referred to colloquially as
         "the bug".
         [PJC]

   11. An enthusiast; -- used mostly in combination, as a camera
       bug. [Colloq.]
       [PJC]

   Bait bug. See under Bait.

   Bug word, swaggering or threatening language. [Obs.]
      --Beau. & Fl.
      [1913 Webster]

Bug \Bug\ (b[u^]g), v. t.
   to annoy; to bother or pester.
   [PJC] Bugaboo

bug
 n.

    An unwanted and unintended property of a program or piece of hardware, esp.
    one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym of feature. Examples: ?There's
    a bug in the editor: it writes things out backwards.? ?The system crashed
    because of a hardware bug.? ?Fred is a winner, but he has a few bugs?
    (i.e., Fred is a good guy, but he has a few personality problems).

    Historical note: Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better
    known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a technician
    solved a glitch in the Harvard Mark II machine by pulling an actual
    insect out from between the contacts of one of its relays, and she
    subsequently promulgated bug in its hackish sense as a joke about the
    incident (though, as she was careful to admit, she was not there when it
    happened). For many years the logbook associated with the incident and the
    actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at the Naval Surface
    Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story, with a picture of the logbook and
    the moth taped into it, is recorded in the Annals of the History of
    Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.

    The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads ?1545 Relay #70
    Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found?. This
    wording establishes that the term was already in use at the time in its
    current specific sense ? and Hopper herself reports that the term bug was
    regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII.

    [bugpic-col]

    The ?original bug? (the caption date is incorrect)

    Indeed, the use of bug to mean an industrial defect was already established
    in Thomas Edison's time, and a more specific and rather modern use can be
    found in an electrical handbook from 1896 (Hawkin's New Catechism of
    Electricity, Theo. Audel & Co.) which says: ?The term ?bug? is used to a
    limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the connections or
    working of electric apparatus.? It further notes that the term is ?said to
    have originated in quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred to all
    electric apparatus.?

    The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of the term;
    that it came from telephone company usage, in which ?bugs in a telephone
    cable? were blamed for noisy lines. Though this derivation seems to be
    mistaken, it may well be a distorted memory of a joke first current among
    telegraph operators more than a century ago!

    Or perhaps not a joke. Historians of the field inform us that the term ?bug
    ? was regularly used in the early days of telegraphy to refer to a variety
    of semi-automatic telegraphy keyers that would send a string of dots if you
    held them down. In fact, the Vibroplex keyers (which were among the most
    common of this type) even had a graphic of a beetle on them (and still do)!
    While the ability to send repeated dots automatically was very useful for
    professional morse code operators, these were also significantly trickier
    to use than the older manual keyers, and it could take some practice to
    ensure one didn't introduce extraneous dots into the code by holding the
    key down a fraction too long. In the hands of an inexperienced operator, a
    Vibroplex ?bug? on the line could mean that a lot of garbled Morse would
    soon be coming your way.

    Further, the term ?bug? has long been used among radio technicians to
    describe a device that converts electromagnetic field variations into
    acoustic signals. It is used to trace radio interference and look for
    dangerous radio emissions. Radio community usage derives from the
    roach-like shape of the first versions used by 19th century physicists. The
    first versions consisted of a coil of wire (roach body), with the two wire
    ends sticking out and bent back to nearly touch forming a spark gap (roach
    antennae). The bug is to the radio technician what the stethoscope is to
    the stereotypical medical doctor. This sense is almost certainly ancestral
    to modern use of ?bug? for a covert monitoring device, but may also have
    contributed to the use of ?bug? for the effects of radio interference
    itself.

    Actually, use of bug in the general sense of a disruptive event goes back
    to Shakespeare! (Henry VI, part III - Act V, Scene II: King Edward: ?So,
    lie thou there. Die thou; and die our fear; For Warwick was a bug that
    fear'd us all.?) In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one
    meaning of bug is ?A frightful object; a walking spectre?; this is traced
    to ?bugbear?, a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to
    complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular
    lexicon through fantasy role-playing games.

    In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to insects. Here is a
    plausible conversation that never actually happened: ?There is a bug in
    this ant farm!? ?What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it.? ?That's the
    bug.?

    A careful discussion of the etymological issues can be found in a paper by
    Fred R. Shapiro, 1987, ?Entomology of the Computer Bug: History and
    Folklore?, American Speech 62(4):376-378.

    [There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was moved to the
    Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry so asserted. A
    correspondent who thought to check discovered that the bug was not there.
    While investigating this in late 1990, your editor discovered that the NSWC
    still had the bug, but had unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to
    accept it ? and that the present curator of their History of American
    Technology Museum didn't know this and agreed that it would make a
    worthwhile exhibit. It was moved to the Smithsonian in mid-1991, but due to
    space and money constraints was not actually exhibited for years
    afterwards. Thus, the process of investigating the original-computer-bug
    bug fixed it in an entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true! ?ESR]

    [73-07-29]

    It helps to remember that this dates from 1973.

bug
bugs
defect
snag

    An unwanted and unintended property of a
   program or piece of hardware, especially one that causes
   it to malfunction.  Antonym of feature.  E.g. "There's a bug
   in the editor: it writes things out backward."  The
   identification and removal of bugs in a program is called
   "debugging".

   Admiral Grace Hopper (an early computing pioneer better
   known for inventing COBOL) liked to tell a story in which a
   technician solved a glitch in the Harvard Mark II machine
   by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of
   one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated bug in
   its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she
   was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened).
   For many years the logbook associated with the incident and
   the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at
   the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).  The entire story,
   with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is
   recorded in the "Annals of the History of Computing", Vol. 3,
   No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.

   The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads
   "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay.  First actual case of
   bug being found".  This wording establishes that the term was
   already in use at the time in its current specific sense - and
   Hopper herself reports that the term "bug" was regularly
   applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII.

   Indeed, the use of "bug" to mean an industrial defect was
   already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more
   specific and rather modern use can be found in an electrical
   handbook from 1896 ("Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity",
   Theo. Audel & Co.)  which says: "The term "bug" is used to a
   limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the
   connections or working of electric apparatus."  It further
   notes that the term is "said to have originated in
   quadruplex telegraphy and have been transferred to all
   electric apparatus."

   The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of
   the term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which
   "bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines.
   Though this derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a
   distorted memory of a joke first current among *telegraph*
   operators more than a century ago!

   Actually, use of "bug" in the general sense of a disruptive
   event goes back to Shakespeare!  In the first edition of
   Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of "bug" is "A
   frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to
   "bugbear", a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster
   which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced
   into the popular lexicon through fantasy role-playing games.

   In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to
   insects.  Here is a plausible conversation that never actually
   happened:

   "There is a bug in this ant farm!"

   "What do you mean?  I don't see any ants in it."

   "That's the bug."

   [There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was
   moved to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry
   so asserted.  A correspondent who thought to check discovered
   that the bug was not there.  While investigating this in late
   1990, your editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug,
   but had unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept
   it - and that the present curator of their History of
   American Technology Museum didn't know this and agreed that it
   would make a worthwhile exhibit.  It was moved to the
   Smithsonian in mid-1991, but due to space and money
   constraints has not yet been exhibited.  Thus, the process of
   investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an
   entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true!  - ESR]

   [Jargon File]

   (1999-06-29)