"whuggle"

[Laurence Horn]

I'm not sure whether there's a generally accessible lexicon in which this is listed; it's not in AHD, OED, or even urbandictionary, but apparently it's a frequently used term among the MUD (multi-user dungeon/domain) online community, to the extent that this still exists, and it's been attested and elucidated in publications by Lynn Cherny (Conversation and community: Chat in a virtual world. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999)--and in a term paper by one of my students who's evidently a MUD player, so it's still extant. "Whuggle" can be either a verb or a zero-derived noun, and it's a rough analogue of "hug"; there's also "whuggler" and "whugglee" with the obvious meanings.  Apparently it's possible to either hug or whuggle a fellow-player (or avatar?), but one tends to be freer with whuggling than with hugging.  If this family of items has really been around since the 1990s, as it appears, it should be probably be recorded somewhere.  (Was there a relevant ATNW in which these terms were recorded?)  Or does it only belong in a virtual lexicon, rather than an actual one?

LH
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