Frob

The term Frob has typically been used to refer to any small device or object (usually hand-sized) which can be manipulated, or frobbed. It was adopted by the community of computer programmers which grew out of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club in the 1950s. Frob is among the oldest existing words in hacker jargon, as reported in the Jargon File.

The term can refer both to the object being frobbed ("Hand me that frob there, willya?") indicating the manipulation of a frob or as an actual verb ("Hey, frob the switch.") indicating actual frobbing of an object.

See also