wombat

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)

wombat
    n 1: burrowing herbivorous Australian marsupials about the size
         of a badger

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

Wombat \Wom"bat\, n. [From the native name, womback, wombach, in
   Australia.] (Zool.)
   Any one of three species of Australian burrowing marsupials
   of the genus {Phascolomys}, especially the common species
   ({Phascolomys ursinus}). They are nocturnal in their habits,
   and feed mostly on roots.
   [1913 Webster]

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

WOMBAT
 /wom'bat/, adj.

   [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time] Applied to problems which
   are both profoundly {uninteresting} in themselves and unlikely to
   benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful
   constructions such as wrestling with a wombat. See also {crawling
   horror}, {SMOP}. Also note the rather different usage as a
   metasyntactic variable in {Commonwealth Hackish}.

   Users of the {PDP-11} database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat
   as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to "HELP
   WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats.

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

WOMBAT

   Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time.

   Problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting} in
   themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if
   solved.  Often used in fanciful constructions such as
   "wrestling with a wombat".

   See also {crawling horror}, {SMOP}.

   [{Jargon File}]

   (1995-03-10)

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

wombat

   1. <programming> A {metasyntactic variable} in {Commonwealth
   Hackish}.

   2. <computer> {wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk}.

   [{Jargon File}]

   (1995-03-10)