feep

/feep/

1. n. The soft electronic ‘bell’ sound of a display terminal (except for a VT-52); a beep (in fact, the microcomputer world seems to prefer beep).

2. vi. To cause the display to make a feep sound. ASR-33s (the original TTYs) do not feep; they have mechanical bells that ring. Alternate forms: beep, ‘bleep’, or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. (Jeff MacNelly, in his comic strip Shoe, uses the word ‘eep’ for sounds made by computer terminals and video games; this is perhaps the closest written approximation yet.) The term ‘breedle’ was sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly soft (they sound more like the musical equivalent of a raspberry or Bronx cheer; for a close approximation, imagine the sound of a Star Trek communicator's beep lasting for five seconds). The ‘feeper’ on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. See also ding.