crash

1. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the

system, especially of magnetic disk drives (the term

originally described what happened when the air gap of a hard

disk collapses). "Three lusers lost their files in last

night's disk crash." A disk crash that involves the

read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and

scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a "head

crash", whereas the term "system crash" usually, though not

always, implies that the operating system or other software

was at fault.

2. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?"

"Something crashed the OS!" See down. Also used

transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a

person or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing

SPACEWAR crashed the system."

[Jargon File]

(1994-12-01)