wedged

1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is

different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it

has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged,

it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may

be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully

operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it

deadlocks with another (but not all instances of wedging are

deadlocks). See also gronk, locked up, hosed. 2. Often

refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally

wedged - he's convinced that he can levitate through

meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the

state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a

screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line

discipline in some obscure way.

There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is

usually thought to derive from a common description of

recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have

originated with older "hot-press" printing technology in which

physical type elements were locked into type frames with

wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no

changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.

[Jargon File]