hairball

hairball
    n 1: a compact mass of hair that forms in the alimentary canal
         (especially in the stomach of animals as a result of
         licking fur) [syn: {hairball}, {hair ball}, {trichobezoar}]
    

hairball \hair"ball`\, hair ball \hair" ball`\(h[^a]r"b[e^]l`),
   n.
   a compact mass of hair that forms in the stomach of animals
   as a result of licking fur; as, the cat coughed up a hairball
   right on the new rug. [WordNet sense 1 + 2]
   [WordNet 1.5]
    

hairball
 n.

   1. [Fidonet] A large batch of messages that a store-and-forward
   network is failing to forward when it should. Often used in the phrase
   "Fido coughed up a hairball today", meaning that the stuck messages
   have just come unstuck, producing a flood of mail where there had
   previously been drought.

   2. An unmanageably huge mass of source code. "JWZ thought the Mozilla
   effort bogged down because the code was a huge hairball."

   3. Any large amount of garbage coming out suddenly. "Sendmail is
   coughing up a hairball, so expect some slowness accessing the
   Internet."