Frobnicate

Definitions

1. To manipulate or adjust something, especially aimlessly or for the pleasure of fiddling. Frobnicate sits at the formal end of a three-step scale of purposefulness: to 'frob' is to adjust without particular aim, to 'twiddle' is to adjust in discrete steps, and to 'tweak' is to adjust with precision toward a goal. In practice hackers frobnicate a configuration when exploring what a setting does rather than when fixing a known problem. The root noun 'frob' denotes any small knob, switch, or control whose function is unclear, and by extension any arbitrary parameter, which is why the placeholder variable 'frobnitz' recurs throughout MIT-descended code.