mung
/muhng/ (MIT, 1960) Mash Until No Good.
Sometime after that the derivation from the recursive acronym "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)
Nearby terms:
munching squares « munchkin « mundane « mung
» munge » MUP » MU-Prolog
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