4  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Hairy  \Hair"y\,  a. 
  Bearing  or  covered  with  hair;  made  of  or  resembling  hair; 
  rough  with  hair;  rough  with  hair;  rough  with  hair;  hirsute. 
 
  His  mantle  hairy,  and  his  bonnet  sedge.  --Milton. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  hairy 
  adj  1:  having  or  covered  with  hair;  "Jacob  was  a  hairy  man";  "a 
  hairy  caterpillar"  [syn:  {hirsute}]  [ant:  {hairless}] 
  2:  hazardous  and  frightening;  "hairy  moments  in  the  mountains" 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  hairy  adj  1.  Annoyingly  complicated.  "{DWIM}  is  incredibly 
  hairy."  2.  Incomprehensible.  "{DWIM}  is  incredibly  hairy." 
  3.  Of  people,  high-powered,  authoritative,  rare  expert,  and/or 
  incomprehensible.  Hard  to  explain  except  in  context:  "He  knows  this  hairy 
  lawyer  who  says  there's  nothing  to  worry  about."  See  also  {hirsute}. 
 
  A  well-known  result  in  topology  called  the  Brouwer  Fixed-Point 
  Theorem  states  that  any  continuous  transformation  of  a  2-sphere  into 
  itself  has  at  least  one  fixed  point.  Mathematically  literate  hackers  tend 
  to  associate  the  term  `hairy'  with  the  informal  version  of  this  theorem; 
  "You  can't  comb  a  hairy  ball  smooth." 
 
  The  adjective  `long-haired'  is  well-attested  to  have  been  in 
  slang  use  among  scientists  and  engineers  during  the  early  1950s;  it  was 
  equivalent  to  modern  `hairy'  senses  1  and  2,  and  was  very  likely  ancestral 
  to  the  hackish  use  In  fact  the  noun  `long-hair'  was  at  the  time  used 
  to  describe  a  person  satisfying  sense  3.  Both  senses  probably  passed 
  out  of  use  when  long  hair  was  adopted  as  a  signature  trait  by  the  1960s 
  counterculture,  leaving  hackish  `hairy'  as  a  sort  of  stunted  mutant  relic. 
 
  In  British  mainstream  use  hairy"  means  "dangerous",  and 
  consequently,  in  British  programming  terms,  hairy"  may  be  used  to  denote 
  complicated  and/or  incomprehensible  code,  but  only  if  that  complexity 
  or  incomprehesiveness  is  also  considered  dangerous. 
 
 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  hairy 
 
  1.  Annoyingly  complicated.  "{DWIM}  is  incredibly  hairy." 
 
  2.  Incomprehensible.  "{DWIM}  is  incredibly  hairy." 
 
  3.  Of  people,  high-powered,  authoritative,  rare  expert, 
  and/or  incomprehensible.  Hard  to  explain  except  in  context: 
  "He  knows  this  hairy  lawyer  who  says  there's  nothing  to  worry 
  about."  See  also  {hirsute}. 
 
  A  well-known  result  in  {topology}  called  the  Brouwer 
  Fixed-Point  Theorem  states  that  any  continuous  transformation 
  of  a  surface  into  itself  has  at  least  one  {fixed  point}. 
  Mathematically  literate  hackers  tend  to  associate  the  term 
  hairy"  with  the  informal  version  of  this  theorem;  "You  can't 
  comb  a  hairy  ball  smooth." 
 
  The  adjective  "long-haired"  is  well-attested  to  have  been  in 
  slang  use  among  scientists  and  engineers  during  the  early 
  1950s;  it  was  equivalent  to  modern  hairy"  and  was  very  likely 
  ancestral  to  the  hackish  use  In  fact  the  noun  "long-hair" 
  was  at  the  time  used  to  describe  a  hairy  person.  Both  senses 
  probably  passed  out  of  use  when  long  hair  was  adopted  as  a 
  signature  trait  by  the  1960s  counterculture,  leaving  hackish 
  hairy"  as  a  sort  of  stunted  mutant  relic. 
 
  [{Jargon  File}] 
 
  (1995-04-16) 
 
 

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