under the hood

under the hood

[hot-rodder talk] 1. The underlying implementation of aproduct (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that theimplementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearance,but the speaker is about to enable the listener to grok it."Let's now look under the hood to see how ...."

2. Can also imply that the implementation is much simpler thanthe appearance would indicate: "Under the hood, we are justfork/execing the shell."

3. Inside a chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a40MHz 68030!"

under the hood

A method of instrument flight training in which the trainee is under the hood to restrict visibility outside the cockpit and is prevented from seeing outside while simulating instrument flight. An appropriately rated pilot is required to act as a safety pilot in the other control seat while this training or practice is being conducted.