hanging chad

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(chăd)
n.

1. Scraps or bits of paper, such as the perforated edges of paper for tractor feed printers or the tiny rectangles punched out from data cards.
2. One of these scraps or bits of paper.

[Origin unknown.]

A piece of paper that is punched out on a punch card, paper tape or on the borders of continuous forms. A chadded form is when the holes are cut completely through, which is typical of punch cards. In a chadless form or in chadless paper tape, the chads are still attached to one edge of the hole.

Chads on the Floor!

In the U.S. presidential election of 2000, people were up in arms over the extra chads on the floor where several Florida counties were recounting the vote. The punched holes (chads) are supposed to fall out of the cards when they are punched. The fact that some chads were still hanging but the additional handling caused them to fall away later was perfectly natural. Why nobody informed the officials that this was normal was as ridiculous as the antiquated voting equipment.

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1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called selvage, perf, and ripoff.

2. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this has also been called chaff, computer confetti, and keypunch droppings. It's reported that this was very old Army slang (associated with teletypewriters before the computer era), and has been occasionally sighted in directions for punched-card vote tabulators long after it passed out of live use among computer programmers in the late 1970s. This sense of ‘chad’ returned to the mainstream during the finale of the hotly disputed U.S. presidential election in 2000 via stories about the Florida vote recounts. Note however that in the revived mainstream usage chad is not a mass noun and ‘a chad’ is a single piece of the stuff.

There is an urban legend that chad (sense 2) derives from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be ‘chad’. However, serious attempts to track down “Chadless” as a personal name or U.S. trademark have failed, casting doubt on this etymology — and the U.S. Patent Classification System uses “chadless” (small c) as an adjective, suggesting that “chadless” derives from “chad” and not the other way around. There is another legend that the word was originally acronymic, standing for “Card Hole Aggregate Debris”, but this has all the earmarks of a backronym. It has also been noted that the word “chad” is Scots dialect for gravel, but nobody has proposed any plausible reason that card chaff should be thought of as gravel. None of these etymologies is really plausible.

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a fragment of paper separated from a ballot by the action of a hole-punch in certain kinds of voting machine; also used to classify incompletely punched ballots (hanging, pregnant, or dimpled chad). The word was made commonplace in reporting of the disputed US Presidential election of 2000, being crucial in the counting of the vote in the pivotal State of Florida.

— Paul Martin

For a list of words related to chad, see:

• General Technology - chad: material punched out when holes are made along margins of perforated computer material; any wasted material

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See words rhyming with "Chad."

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - lille stykke papiraffald fra hullemaskine

idioms:

• chad box    æske til papiraffald på hullemaskine

n. - Tchad

Français (French)
n. - (Comput) confetti

idioms:

• chad box    boîte de confettis

n. - Tchad

Deutsch (German)
n. - gelochte Kartei, perforierte Kartei

idioms:

• chad box    Kasten, der benutzt wird,um die aus Compurterkarten kommenden Papierschnipseln, zu sammeln

n. - Tschad

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κομφετί, ξακρίδια από διάτρητο μηχανογραφικό χαρτί ή μηχανογραφικές κάρτες

idioms:

• chad box    δοχείο απορριμμάτων διάτρησης μηχανογραφικών καρτών

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Tchade

Español (Spanish)
n. - (informática) material de desecho producido al perforarse cintas de papel o tarjetas

idioms:

• chad box    caja para recolectar el material de desecho producido al perforarse cintas de papel o tarjetas

n. - Chad

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - stansspill, Tchad

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
乍得

乍得

idioms:

• chad box    孔屑盒

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 查德

n. - 查德

idioms:

• chad box    孔屑盒

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 펀치 카드에 구멍을 뚫을 때 생기는 종이 부스러기

차드 (아프리카 중북부의 공화국; 공식명 the Republic of ~; 수도 N'Djamena), Lake ~; 차드 호 (아프리카 중북부), 차드 (남자 이름)

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قطعه البطاقه المخرمه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עיגול קלף קטן שנוצר מניקוב כרטיס קלט למחשב (מיושן)‬
n. - ‮צ'אד‬

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