From: utzoo!dciem!mmt Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: definition of misfeature Article-I.D.: dciem.160 Posted: Fri Jan 28 14:27:22 1983 Received: Fri Jan 28 16:54:12 1983 References: houxa.153 OED- Misfeature: a distorted feature; a bad feature or trait. In designing and debugging the time-sharing system for the PDP-9T, we used ``bug'' for the things that caused problems because of coding errors and the like. These could be fixed if found. The word for problem-causing things embedded in the design was ``beast''. We still use the term. For example, DEC's RSX operating system is an attempt to program around a basic beast, whereas many of the problems in UNIX are bugs. Martin Taylor