actually, ive heard the plural for unix to be unices, rather than unixen, or also expressed as *nix, for the different flavours of unix out there. the hacker's dictionary is great though, just to read the words and their origins. i've now got everyone at work to use the term "virtual friday" which i picked out of the dictionary! =D << > Is VAXen the plural of VAX ? Why? Play on words. Like the plural of 'Ox' is 'Oxen', plurals of many things involving computers that end in 'x' end in 'xen'. As VAXen, Unixen (for the many variations on the Unix OS such as Venix, Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, Xenix, and several others. You'll also see more than one box (as in CPU) referred to as 'boxen'. Check out _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, 2nd Edition, from MIT Press, also available in many forms on the Net as the "Jargon File". Currently (and for a long time now) maintained by Eric S. Raymond. Try <http://www2.dictionary.com/dictionary.jargon/>. (Actually, recommended to everybody who ever wonders what one of us old farts is talking about). -- Ward Griffiths >> david