hosed

(jargon)A somewhat humorous variant of "down", usedprimarily by Unix hackers. "Hosed" implies a conditionthought to be relatively easy to reverse. It is also widelyused of people in the mainstream sense of "in an extremelyunfortunate situation". The term was popularised by fighterpilots refering to being hosed by machine gun fire (date?).Usage in hackerdom dates back to CMU in the 1970s orearlier.

"Acronyms and Abbreviations" from UCC, Ireland expands it as "HardwareOr Software Error Detected", though this is probably aback-formation.

The Jargon File version 4.1.4 1999-06-17 says that it wasprobably derived from the Canadian slang "hoser" (meaning "aman, esp. one who works at a job that uses physical ratherthan mental skills and whose habits are slightly offensive butamusing").

One correspondant speculates about an allusion to a hose-likebody part.

Once upon a time, a Cray that had been experiencing periodicdifficulties crashed, and it was announced to have been hosed.It was discovered that the crash was due to the disconnectionof some coolant hoses. The problem was corrected, and userswere then assured that everything was OK because the systemhad been rehosed. See also dehose.

See also: hose.

hosed

hosed

HOSED