force quit

present singular third person force quits · participle present force quitting · participle past force quitted · past force quitted

1. transitive(intransitive) To abort an unresponsive computer program, bypassing the usual closure process.

   Works real well :) on an si... i even got a buzzing video box for a cursor when i tried to 'force quit'...

   1991 May 26, Kiran Wagle, “Re: Good Stuff & Bad Stuff about System 7”, in comp.sys.mac.system (Usenet), retrieved 08 Sep 2024

   2 more examples

   Symptom: choose "About Balloon Help" from the Help Menu, then click on the Application menu icon. Mac freezes (but it is possible to force quit the current application). On returning to Finder the Application menu and "About Balloon Help" remain disabled. Eventually the Mac crashes completely.

   1991 July 24, Bill Johnston, “Teleport <-> Balloon Help conflict”, in comp.sys.mac.comm (Usenet), retrieved 05 Sep 2018, message-ID <59524@nigel.ee.udel.edu>

   Hm? I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'm sure you wouldn't want to "force quit" a background application everytime^([sic]) you press a key. As for the other things, the macintosh already does them just fine now, so I don't see the advantage in changing.

   1992 October 15, Edward V. Wright, “Re: the NeXT option (Was Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT)”, in comp.sys.mac.advocacy (Usenet), retrieved 05 Sep 2018, message-ID <ewright.719169334@convex.convex.com>