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wombat |
5 definitions found From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Wombat \Wom"bat\, n. [From the native name womback wombach, in Australia.] (Zo["o]l.) Any one of three species of Australian burrowing marsupials of the genus {Phascolomys}, especially the common species ({P. ursinus}). They are nocturnal in their habits, and feed mostly on roots. From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]: wombat n : burrowing herbivorous Australian marsupials about the size of a badger From Jargon File (4.2.3, 23 NOV 2000) [jargon]: WOMBAT /wom'bat/ adj [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'. See also {crawling horror}, {SMOP}. Also note the rather different usage as a metasyntactic variable in {{Commonwealth Hackish}}. Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats. From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (13 Mar 01) [foldoc]: WOMBAT Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time. Problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as "wrestling with a wombat". See also {crawling horror}, {SMOP}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-10) From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (13 Mar 01) [foldoc]: wombat 1.A {metasyntactic variable} in {Commonwealth Hackish}. 2. {wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-10)
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