1. luser
[common] A user; esp. one who is also a
loser. (luser and
loser are pronounced identically.) This word was
coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a
terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it
printed out some status information, including how many people were already
using the computer; it might print “14 users”, for example.
Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print
“14 losers” instead. There ensued a great controversy, as
some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their
faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers
struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the
others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it
would say “users” or “losers”. Finally, someone
tried the compromise “lusers”, and it stuck. Later one of the
ITS machines supported luser as a
request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a
museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term luser is often seen in program comments and on
Usenet. Compare mundane,
muggle, newbie,
chainik.
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Definitions of luser
