choke
= C =
chomper
chomp vi.
1. To lose; specifically, to chew on something
of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to
gnashing of teeth. 2. To bite the bag; See bagbiter.
A hand gesture commonly accompanies this. To perform it, hold the
four fingers together and place the thumb against their tips. Now
open and close your hand rapidly to suggest a biting action (much
like what Pac-Man does in the classic video game, though this
pantomime seems to predate that). The gesture alone means `chomp
chomp' (see "Verb Doubling" in the "Jargon Construction" section of the Prependices). The hand may be
pointed at the object of complaint, and for real emphasis you can
use both hands at once. Doing this to a person is equivalent to
saying "You chomper!" If you point the gesture at yourself, it
is a humble but humorous admission of some failure. You might do
this if someone told you that a program you had written had failed
in some surprising way and you felt dumb for not having anticipated
it.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.