blinkenlight

English

Etymology

A faux-Germanization of blinkin' lights, invoking German blinken (“blink, flash”).

Noun

blinkenlight (plural blinkenlights)

1. A flashing light or beacon light.
   • Red Blinkenlight — Matt's RV-7 (airplane) Project, 2005
   • The Smart, Stealth LED Blinkenlight — Instructables, LED Bikelight, 2011
2. A status light on an electronic or electric device such as a modem, router, network hub, and so forth.
   • Running a PDP-11 simulation with SIMH … is just half the fun, because you do not get the blinkenlight console. — Henk Gooijen, Homebrew 'PDP=11', undated
   • Blinkenlight … An indicator light. … The blinkenlight interface is used to switch on and off an indicator light, … — Blinkenlight, Interface Specification, Coroware Support Pages for Player 3.01, 2005
   • Found a link to the USB blinkenlight hub. — blinkenlight USB2 hub, 2007
   • Heat Controlled Blinkenlight — Gavin Black, "Blinkenlight", 2008
   • Das Blinkenlight Effect. So, remember my funky battery light problem? — Paul Frankenstein, "Das Blinkenlight Effect", 2006
   • Mysterious Eigenharp offers blinkenlight sitar looks — Tim Stevens, Engadget: News, 2009
   • In general, computers have long since become too fast for blinkenlight displays to be of much use in debugging problems, — Discover Magazine Online, "This Day in History: The Birth of Blinkenlights", Mar, 2009

Translations

a flashing light or beacon light

• German: Blinklicht n
• Russian: мига́лка (ru) f (migálka), маячо́к (ru) m (majačók)
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