gweep
 /gweep/

    [WPI]

    1. v. To hack, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who
    gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center punching cards
    or crashing the PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent who was
    there at the time opines that the term was originally onomatopoetic,
    describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint terminals long connected to
    the PDP-10; others allege that ?gweep? was the sound of the Datapoint's
    bell (compare feep). The term has survived the demise of those
    technologies, however, and was still alive in early 1999. ?I'm going to go
    gweep for a while. See you in the morning.? ?I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM
    during the week.?

    2. n. One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a hacker. ?He's a hard-core
    gweep, mumbles code in his sleep.? Around 1979 this was considered
    derogatory and not used in self-reference; it has since been proudly
    claimed in much the same way as geek.

gweep

   /gweep/ To hack, usually at night, or one who does so.  At
   WPI, from 1977 onward, gweeps could often be found at the
   College Computing Center punching cards or crashing the
   PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20.  The term has survived the
   demise of those technologies, however, and is still alive in
   late 1991.  "I'm going to go gweep for a while.  See you in
   the morning."  "I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week."

   "Gweep" originated as an onomatopeiac term, evoking the sound
   of the (once-ubiquitous) Hazeltine 9000 terminals' bell on
   WPI campus.

   A gweep is one step above a fweep.

   [Jargon File]

   (1995-01-31)