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GRIND
(redirected from grinds to a halt)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Legal, Idioms, Wikipedia 0.09 sec.
1.GRIND - GRaphical INterpretive Display.

A graphics input language for the PDP-9.

["GRIND: A Language and Translator for Computer Graphics", A.P. Conn, Dartmouth, June 1969].
2.grind - (MIT and Berkeley) To prettify hardcopy of code, especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords and comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare; prettyprint was and is the generic term for such operations.
3.grind - (Unix) To generate the formatted version of a document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe source.
4.grind - To run seemingly interminably, especially (but not necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to crunch or grovel. Grinding has a connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind a disk, network, etc.

See also hog.
5.grind - To make the whole system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11."
6.grind - "grind grind" excl. Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"


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Everything grinds to a halt while the client is brought up to speed on the day's progress.
With so much dependent on computers, work often grinds to a halt when networks crash.
But upon hearing my wife's refrain, the woman in front of us broke in to insist that it was her fault we were stuck in line, because whatever line she gets into immediately grinds to a halt.
 
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