[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

hairball \hair"ball`\, hair ball \hair" ball`\h^ar"be^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

[2] : WordNet (r) 2.0

hairball
     n : a compact mass of hair that forms in the alimentary canal
         especially in the stomach of animals as a result of
         licking fur syn: hair ball, trichobezoar
see also:
hair ball trichobezoar 

[3] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

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."

Hairball >> H Words
Hairball, definition of term: Hairball
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