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.