jargon 1. A piece of
hardware that encapsulates some
function but can't be used without some kind of
front end.
2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that does a
lot of noisy
crunching, such as a "database engine", or
The hackish senses of "engine" are actually close to its
original, pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever
device, or instrument (the word is cognate to "ingenuity").
This sense had not been completely eclipsed by the modern
connotation of power-transducing machinery in
CharlesBabbage's time, which explains why he named the
stored-program computer that he designed in 1844 the
(1996-05-31)