phreak

English

Etymology

Blend of phone +‎ freak.

Pronunciation

• enPR: frēk, IPA^(key): /fɹiːk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːk
• Homophone: freak

Noun

phreak (plural phreaks)

1. (slang, dated) A person who engages in phone phreaking.
   • 1992, Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown‎^[1], →ISBN:

     Phreaks can max-out 911 systems just by siccing a bunch of computer-modems on them in tandem, dialling them over and over until they clog.

   • 2007 August 20, Douglas Martin, “Joybubbles, 58, Peter Pan of Phone Hackers, Dies”, in The New York Times‎^[2], archived from the original on 12 February 2022:

     Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991), a blind genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he could make free phone calls by whistling tones and went on to play a pivotal role in the 1970s subculture of “phone phreaks,” died on Aug. 8 in Minneapolis.

Verb

phreak (third-person singular simple present phreaks, present participle phreaking, simple past and past participle phreaked)

1. (slang, transitive, intransitive, dated) To engage in phone phreaking.

Derived terms

• phreaker

Further reading

• phreaking on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Parekh