:Soundalike slang:
------------------

   Hackers will often make rhymes or puns in order to convert an
ordinary word or phrase into something more interesting.  It is
considered particularly {flavorful} if the phrase is bent so as to
include some other jargon word; thus the computer hobbyist magazine
"Dr. Dobb's Journal" is almost always referred to among hackers as `Dr.
Frob's Journal' or simply `Dr. Frob's'.  Terms of this kind that have
been in fairly wide use include names for newspapers:

         Boston Herald => Horrid (or Harried)
         Boston Globe => Boston Glob
         Houston (or San Francisco) Chronicle
                => the Crocknicle (or the Comical)
         New York Times => New York Slime
         Wall Street Journal => Wall Street Urinal

   However, terms like these are often made up on the spur of the
moment.  Standard examples include:

         Data General => Dirty Genitals
         IBM 360 => IBM Three-Sickly
         Government Property --- Do Not Duplicate (on keys)
                 => Government Duplicity --- Do Not Propagate
         for historical reasons => for hysterical raisins
         Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford)
                 => Marginal Hacks Hall
         Microsoft => Microsloth
         Internet Explorer => Internet Exploiter

   This is not really similar to the Cockney rhyming slang it has been
compared to in the past, because Cockney substitutions are opaque
whereas hacker punning jargon is intentionally transparent.

