DRECNET

[from Yiddish/German 'dreck', meaning dirt]

n. Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible.

See also connector conspiracy.