Word.ws English Dictionary

all elbows

all elbows adjective: of a program that steals whatever resources it needs without consideration for other tasks.

Adjective

all elbows (not comparable)

  1. (dated) of a program that steals whatever resources it needs without consideration for other tasks.
    • Multicom goes beyond lame. It's about the worst example of
      an 'all elbows' 1984 vintage DOS program that I've seen in
      a long time. Yuk!1995 October 12, Randy Reames, “MFJ-1278 Software?”, in rec.radio.amateur.digital.misc (Usenet)
    • It /will/ nuke NT's loader, but that's because NT is all
      elbows when it comes to booting.1998 December 20, Iain Georgeson, “Boot sector woes”, in alt.dur.general (Usenet)

Origin of all elbows

From the idea that these programs rudely elbow others out of their way.

Questions about all elbows

What does all elbows mean?
All elbows means of a program that steals whatever resources it needs without consideration for other tasks.
What part of speech is all elbows?
All elbows is an adjective.

Words near all elbows in the dictionary

  1. all dressed up and nowhere to go
  2. all dressed up with no place to go
  3. all dressed up with nowhere to go
  4. all duck or no dinner
  5. all ears
  6. all elbows
  7. all else being equal
  8. all else the same
  9. all ends up
  10. all even
  11. all expenses paid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all elbows (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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