flush

flush v.  1. To delete something, usually superfluous, or to
   abort an operation.  "All that nonsense has been flushed."
   2. [UNIX/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an
   `fflush(3)' call.  This is *not* an abort or deletion as
   in sense 1, but a demand for early completion!  3. To leave at the
   end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal).  "I'm
   going to flush now."  "Time to flush."  4. To exclude someone
   from an activity, or to ignore a person.

   `Flush' was standard ITS terminology for aborting an output
   operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but
   was not, as having been flushed.  It is speculated that this term
   arose from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing
   down the internal output buffer, washing the characters away before
   they could be printed.  The UNIX/C usage, on the other hand, was
   propagated by the `fflush(3)' call in C's standard I/O library
   (though it is reported to have been in use among BLISS programmers
   at DEC and on Honeywell and IBM machines as far back as 1965).
   UNIX/C hackers find the ITS usage confusing, and vice versa.