Wombat

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Wombat \Wom"bat\, n. [From the native name, womback, wombach, in
     Australia.] (Zool.)
     Any one of three species of Australian burrowing marsupials
     of the genus {Phascolomys}, especially the common species
     ({Phascolomys ursinus}). They are nocturnal in their habits,
     and feed mostly on roots.


     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  wombat
       n : burrowing herbivorous Australian marsupials about the size
           of a badger

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  WOMBAT /wom'bat/ adj. [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time]
     Applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in
     themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved.
     Often used in fanciful constructions such as `wrestling with a wombat'.
     See also {crawling horror}, {SMOP}. Also note the rather different usage
     as a metasyntactic variable in {{Commonwealth Hackish}}.
  
     Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat as
     their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP
     WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  WOMBAT
       
          Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time.
       
          Problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in
          themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if
          solved.  Often used in fanciful constructions such as
          "wrestling with a wombat".
       
          See also {crawling horror}, {SMOP}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1995-03-10)
       
       

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  wombat
       
          1.  A {metasyntactic variable} in {Commonwealth
          Hackish}.
       
          2.  {wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1995-03-10)