rain dance

noun
1.
(especially among American Indians) a ritualistic dance performed to bring rain.
Origin
1925-30
Examples from the web for rain dance
  • Leaping from trees and brandishing boughs, apes charge downhill in a wild rain dance.
  • The rain dance is getting a twenty-first-century revamp using laser technology.
  • Indians would do a rain dance and get immediate results.
  • Now there was a whole line of beer drinkers doing the rain dance out in the hall, this being a single-bath unit.
rain dance in Technology

1. Any ceremonial action taken to correct a hardware problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This especially applies to reseating printed circuit boards, reconnecting cables, etc. "I can't boot up the machine. We'll have to wait for Greg to do his rain dance."
2. Any arcane sequence of actions performed with computers or software in order to achieve some goal; the term is usually restricted to rituals that include both an incantation or two and physical activity or motion.
Compare magic, voodoo programming, black art, cargo cult programming, wave a dead chicken.
[Jargon File]
(1995-02-09)