Widlarize

English

Etymology

From Widlar +‎ -ize. Coined in reference to American electronics engineer Bob Widlar, who was known for destroying his components by this method.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwaɪd.lɚ.aɪz/, (commonly) /ˈwɪd.lɚ.aɪz/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Verb

Widlarize (third-person singular simple present Widlarizes, present participle Widlarizing, simple past and past participle Widlarized)

1. (transitive, slang) To destroy (a defective electronic component) using a hammer.
   • 1991, Robert A[llen] Pease, Troubleshooting Analog Circuits: With Electronics Workbench Circuits, Boston, M.A. […]: Newnes, →ISBN, page 9:

     Now, when I have finished my inspection, and I am still mad as hell because I have wasted a lot of time being fooled by a bad component—what do I do? I usually WIDLARIZE it, and it makes me feel a lot better. How do you WIDLARIZE something? You take it over to the anvil part of the vice, and you beat on it with a hammer, until it is all crunched down to tiny little pieces, so small that you don't even have to sweep it off the floor.

   • 1999 February 9, Doug, “High output tube amp”, in rec.audio.tubes‎^[1] (Usenet):

     Abuse of them by people who don't care about the RF they generate is leading certain people to buy up and Widlarize ones floating around hamfests.

   • 2002 April 28, Daniel Lang, “Interesting failure, Seagate ST41600N”, in sci.electronics.design‎^[2] (Usenet):

     I decided to "Widlarize" the failed drive, first dropping it 4 feet onto the floor (1/2" thick carpet with concrete underneath). To my surprise, about half the chips popped off the PC board!

   • 2006 February 8, Terry Given, “IGBTs are pretty fast”, in sci.electronics.design‎^[3] (Usenet):

     A diode-like interconnect once cost me, another engineer and a tech 3 days once - we narrowed the fault down to a resistive divider that didnt work linearly. replacing the protoboard fixed the problem; the old one got Widlarised.