splat

n 1: a single splash; "he heard a splat as it hit the floor"

2: a slat of wood in the middle of the back of a straight chair

v 1: give off the sound of a bullet flattening on impact

2: split open and flatten for cooking, as of fish over an open

fire

3: flatten on impact; "The snowballs splatted on the trees"

splat

1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the

asterisk ("▫") character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive

from the "squashed-bug" appearance of the asterisk on many

early line printers.

2. Name used by some {MIT} people for the "#" character (ASCII

35).

3. (Rochester Institute of Technology) The {feature key} on a

Mac (same as {alt}).

4. An obsolete name used by some people for the

{Stanford}/{ITS} {extended ASCII} circle-x character. This

character is also called "blobby" and "frob", among other

names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation

for "tensor product".

5. An obsolete name for the semi-mythical {Stanford} {extended

ASCII} circle-plus character.

See also {ASCII}.

[{Jargon File}]

(1995-01-19)