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.

Further reading

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