# Widlarize
## English
### Etymology

From Widlar +‎ -ize (suffix forming verbs meaning doing things denoted by the adjectives or nouns to which it is attached). Widlar (pronounced /ˈwaɪdləɹ/) is the surname of the American electronics engineer Bob Widlar (1937–1991), who was known for destroying his components using the method.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈwaɪdləɹaɪz/, (commonly) /ˈwɪdləɹaɪz/
* Audio (Southern England); /ˈwaɪdləɹaɪz/:(file)
* Audio (Southern England); /ˈwɪdləɹaɪz/:(file)
* Hyphenation: Wid‧ler‧ize

### Verb

Widlarize (third-person singular simple present Widlarizes, present participle Widlarizing, simple past and past participle Widlarized)
* (transitive, electronics, slang, uncommon) To destroy (a defective electronic component) using a hammer.
** 1991, Robert A[llen] Pease, “First Things First: The Philosophy of Troubleshooting”, in Troubleshooting Analog Circuits: With Electronics Workbench Circuits, Boston, Mass.: Newnes, published 1993, →ISBN, page 9:Now, when I have finished my inspection, and I am still mad as hell because I have wasted a lot of time being fooled by a bad component—what do I do? I usually WIDLARIZE it, and it makes me feel a lot better. How do you WIDLARIZE something? You take it over to the anvil part of the vice, and you beat on it with a hammer, until it is all crunched down to tiny little pieces, so small that you don't even have to sweep it off the floor. It sure makes you feel better. […] And the late Bob Widlar is the guy who showed me how to do it.
** 1999 February 9, Doug, “High Output Tube Amp”, in rec.audio.tubes‎ (Usenet):Abuse of them by people who don't care about the RF they generate is leading certain people to buy up and Widlarize ones floating around hamfests.
** 1999 July 25, Bob Pease, “Pease Porridge: What’s All that Widlar Stuff, Anyhow?”, in Stephen E. Scrupski, editor, Electronic Design, volume 39, number 14, Cleveland, Oh.: Penton Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 146, column 3:[…] I recommend that you join me in doing this "Widlarizing" when a bad component fools you. You will feel a lot better.
** 2002 April 28, Daniel Lang, “Interesting Failure, Seagate ST41600N”, in sci.electronics.design‎ (Usenet):I decided to "Widlarize" the failed drive, first dropping it 4 feet onto the floor (1/2" thick carpet with concrete underneath). To my surprise, about half the chips popped off the PC board! […] Close inspection of the failed joints seems to indicate a failure of the bond between the solder and the copper of the PC board.
** 2006 February 8, Terry Given, “IGBTs are pretty fast”, in sci.electronics.design‎ (Usenet):A diode-like interconnect once cost me, another engineer and a tech 3 days once – we narrowed the fault down to a resistive divider that didnt work linearly. replacing the protoboard fixed the problem; the old one got Widlarised.
** 2014 May 25, Charles Platt, “Experiment 13: No Loud Speaking!”, in Brian Jepson, editor, Make: More Electronics, Sebastopol, Calif.: Maker Media, →ISBN, page 91:[Bob] Widlar's intolerance for defective parts and malfunctioning prototypes was so intense, he was in the habit of destroying them with a sledge hammer. This came to be known as "widlarizing" them.