Acts of Volition

“Making Pants” - a definition

Posted by Steven Garrity on - 13 comments

making pants – (mäk’ing pants) verb.

  1. When a computer hard drive grinds away for no apparent reason, often in the middle of the night, when no humans are around. Usage: What’s your computer doing? I don’t know, it must be making pants or something.

Comments

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CMax -

Are you watching too much Late Night with David Letterman, Steven?

Alan -

http://www.genx40.com

Is it like that chattering sound a money maching makes? I understand a noisy mechanism was chosen for ATMs to provide implicit assurance to the customer that something was happening. Maybe you computer is letting you know it is there - like the Hoos of Hoo-ville?

Mal Ross -

http://www.malross.co.uk/

Is that pants in the American sense (i.e. trousers) or the British (i.e. underwear)? Gotta be clear on this before I start using the phrase... :)

eanws -

http://bl0g.walkersmith.net/

Sometimes in the middle of the night my iBook will wake up for no reason at all. Does anybody know why?

Steven Garrity -

Mal Ross, I didn't know that pants could mean underwear in the UK. I mean it in the long-external pants (i.e. cords) sense.

dowingba -

http://dowingba.blurty.com

I think a better term would be "plotting". It's obviously plotting some fiendish plot to dispose of the irrelevant humans.

Alan -

http://www.genx40.com

If our PCs also spat out 20 dollar bills, would we suspect a plot?

ffoeg -

Fear the machines...its all a hoax people!

paul -

http://pseudodictionary.com

nice, should add that to pseudodictionary.com

Steven Marshall -

Steven, "pants", here in the UK is just used as a short-hand for "underpants", because cords et al. are typically referred to as trousers (a word which we use in exactly the same way as you would use "pants").
So, in short, pants = trousers, underpants = pants, and English ~= English.

Nick Burka -

While living in London last year I made the dire mistake of anouncing to my friends that I was off to "shop for pants". After enduring a barrage of panty jokes I finally saw the error of my ways and instead proceeded to go shopping for "trousers". This was really incidental compared to the time I talked to a girl about her "fanny pack" only to find out that this also doesn't mean the same thing in Britian as it does in Canada.