`asbestos cork award'. (Any reader in doubt as to the intended
application of the cork should consult the etymology under
[619]flame.) Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have
risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity
-- but there is no agreement on which few.
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award, Up:[622]= A =

asbestos longjohns n.

Notional garments donned by [623]Usenet posters just before emitting a
remark they expect will elicit [624]flamage. This is the most common
of the [625]asbestos coinages. Also `asbestos underwear', `asbestos
overcoat', etc.
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Node:ASCII, Next:[626]ASCII art, Previous:[627]asbestos longjohns,
Up:[628]= A =

ASCII /as'kee/ n.

[originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character
set encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7
bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including early
drafts of of ASCII prior to June 1961) used fewer. This change allowed
the inclusion of lowercase letters -- a major [629]win -- but it did
not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in