crash
1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said
of the system (q.v., sense 1), esp. 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. v. 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." 3. vi.
Sometimes said of people hitting the sack after a long hacking run;
see gronk out.
