luser (/loo´zr/ n.)

[common] A user; esp. one who is also a loser. ( luser and loser are pronounced identically.) This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status information, including how many people were already using the computer; it might print

14 users

, for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print

14 losers

instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say

users

or

losers

. Finally, someone tried the compromise

lusers

, and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported luser as a request-for-help command. ITS died the death in mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term luser is often seen in program comments and on Usenet. Compare mundane, muggle, newbie, chainik.