dim

adj 1: lacking in light; not bright or harsh; "a dim light beside

the bed"; "subdued lights and soft music" [syn: {subdued}]

2: lacking clarity or distinctness; "a dim figure in the

distance"; "only a faint recollection"; "shadowy figures

in the gloom"; "saw a vague outline of a building through

the fog"; "a few wispy memories of childhood" [syn: {faint},

{shadowy}, {vague}, {wispy}]

3: made dim or less bright; "the dimmed houselights brought a

hush of anticipation"; "dimmed headlights"; "we like

dimmed lights when we have dinner" [syn: {dimmed}] [ant: {undimmed}]

4: offering little or no hope; "the future looked black";

"prospects were bleak"; "Life in the Aran Islands has

always been bleak and difficult"- J.M.Synge; "took a dim

view of things" [syn: {black}, {bleak}]

5: slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity;

"so dense he never understands anything I say to him";

"never met anyone quite so dim"; "although dull at

classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly

quick"- Thackeray; "dumb officials make some really dumb

decisions"; "he was either normally stupid or being

deliberately obtuse"; "worked with the slow students"

[syn: {dense}, {dull}, {dumb}, {obtuse}, {slow}]

v 1: switch a car's headlights from a higher to a lower beam

[syn: {dip}]

2: become or make darker; "The screen darkend"; "He darkened

the colors by adding brown" [syn: {darken}] [ant: {brighten}]

3: become dim or lusterless; "dim the lights"

4: make dim or lusterless; "Time had dimmed the silver"

5: make dim by comparison or conceal [syn: {blind}]

6: become vague or indistinct; "The distinction between the two

theories blurred" [syn: {blur}, {slur}] [ant: {focus}]

DWIM

/dwim/ [acronym, "Do What I Mean" (not what I say)] 1. Able to

guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when

bogus input was provided.

2. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish

this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. See

{hairy}.

3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer,

especially when one senses one might be tripping over

legalisms (see {legalese}).

Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and

spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his

style, and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if

they were stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus

claimed that the acronym stood for "Damn Warren's Infernal

Machine!'.

In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the

command interpreter used at {Xerox PARC}. One day another

hacker there typed "delete ▫$" to free up some disk space.

(The editor there named backup files by appending "$" to the

original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup

files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that

there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully

reported "▫$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete ▫'". It

then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker

managed to stop it with a {Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a

half dozen or so files were lost.

The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted

to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in

front of his workstation, and then type "delete ▫$" twice.

DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a

complex program; it is also occasionally described as the

single instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when

proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also

jokes about "DWIMC" (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related

term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing);

see {Right Thing}.

[{Jargon File}]