[rare] Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did
something wrong. Once common among APL programmers; may now be
obsolete.
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backward combatability /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ n.

[CMU, Tektronix: from `backward compatibility'] A property of hardware
or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts,
etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of `new and improved'
protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely
deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions
cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of
the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as
opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backwards
compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist
without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes
incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing can lead to
extreme [977]software bloat. See also [978]flag day.
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BAD /B-A-D/ adj.

[IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is