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}.

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