prow

Pronounced: prow, noun/adj

Notes: Another word that I know one of the meanings – but do you know the meaning when used as an adjective?

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Yesterday’s word

The word phreaker is “one who gains illegal access to a telephone system” (note that some references claim that this word is slang)

First usage

Our word came into English in the 1980s

Background / Comments

Our word is considered to be a combination of phone and freak – the action is called “phreaking”. As I noted yesterday, I just happen to know this word from the pre-Internet days. I have a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) account on several local boards, and I ran across the phrase there. I gathered that the idea was to use special combination of tones to allow one to make long distance calls for free. With mobile phones replacing land lines, and so many plans allowing free long-distance calls, I suspect that phreakers and phreaking are getting obsolete — but one reference says that the word now describes people who break into phone company computers.