mung

/muhng/ (MIT, 1960) Mash Until No Good.

Sometime after that the derivation from the recursiveacronym "Mung Until No Good" became standard. 1. To make

changes to a file, especially large-scale and irrevocable

changes.

See BLT.

2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously.

The system only mungs things maliciously; this is a

consequence of Finagle's Law.

See scribble, mangle, trash, nuke.

Reports from Usenet suggest that the pronunciation /muhnj/

is now usual in speech, but the spelling "mung" is still

common in program comments (compare the widespread confusion

over the proper spelling of kluge).

3. The kind of beans of which the sprouts are used in Chinese

food. (That's their real name! Mung beans! Really!)

Like many early hacker terms, this one seems to have

originated at TMRC; it was already in use there in 1958.

Peter Samson (compiler of the original TMRC lexicon) thinks it

may originally have been onomatopoeic for the sound of a relay

spring (contact) being twanged. However, it is known that

during the World Wars, "mung" was army slang for the ersatz

creamed chipped beef better known as "SOS".

[Jargon File]

(1994-12-02)