📦 643 Most Common IT English Terms — Open Dataset
A free, open dataset of 643 real IT and software-engineering English terms — each with a plain-English definition and a category tag — extracted directly from CodersLingo's published glossary pages (core IT glossary, Docker, Kubernetes, SQL, Git, HTTP, design patterns, observability, Terraform, CLI flags, keyboard shortcuts, and more).
What's in it
- term — the word, phrase, acronym, command, or status code.
- definition — a plain-English explanation, as published on the site.
- category — one of 18 source categories (e.g.
docker,sql,http-status-codes,core-glossary). - example — a short usage example, where the source glossary provides one (not all entries have one).
Nothing here is invented — every row is pulled directly from a page already live on coderslingo.com/glossary/. If the glossary grows, this dataset grows with it (it's regenerated on every site build).
Who this is for
- ESL/EFL teachers building IT-focused vocabulary curricula.
- Developers building flashcard apps, chatbots, or NLP training/eval sets that need real developer vocabulary.
- Anyone who wants a portable, offline copy of the CodersLingo glossary.
Looking for spaced-repetition flashcards instead? See the free Anki deck built from the same data.
Preview — first 20 entries
| Term | Definition | Category |
|---|---|---|
| --dry-run, -n (Dry Run) | Show what the command WOULD do without actually doing it. Critical safety flag for destructive operations. | cli-flags |
| --no-X, --without-X (Negation flag) | Disable a feature that is on by default. | cli-flags |
| --version, -V (Version) | Print the tool's version string and exit. Always useful when reproducing bugs. | cli-flags |
| -a, --all (All) | Include everything — hidden files, stopped containers, tracked and untracked changes — instead of just the default subset. | cli-flags |
| -c, --count, --config (Count / Config) | Another flag whose meaning shifts by tool — often "count the matches" or "use this config file". | cli-flags |
| -f, --force (Force) | Skip confirmation prompts and proceed even when the action would normally be blocked or warned about. | cli-flags |
| -h, --help (Help) | Print the command's usage information and exit. | cli-flags |
| -i, --interactive (Interactive) | Prompt for confirmation before each step instead of acting automatically. | cli-flags |
| -o, --output (Output) | Specify where the command should write its output — a file, a format, or a directory. | cli-flags |
| -p (context-dependent) (Port / Parents / Publish) | One of the most overloaded short flags in CLI tooling — meaning depends entirely on the command. | cli-flags |
| -q, --quiet, --silent (Quiet / Silent) | Suppress non-essential output. Useful in scripts where you only care about the exit code. | cli-flags |
| -r, -R, --recursive (Recursive) | Apply the operation to every file in a directory tree, going into all sub-directories. | cli-flags |
| -t, --tag, -t (tty) (Tag / Allocate TTY) | Labels a build artifact with a name, or allocates a pseudo-terminal for an interactive session. | cli-flags |
| -u, --upstream, --user (Upstream / User) | Sets a tracking relationship or specifies which user/account an action runs as. | cli-flags |
| -v, --verbose (Verbose) | Print extra detail about what the command is doing. Useful for debugging. | cli-flags |
| -w, --watch (Watch) | Keep the command running and re-run it (or refresh output) whenever the input changes. | cli-flags |
| -x, --exclude, -x (trace) (Extract / Exclude / Trace) | Extracts an archive, excludes a pattern from an operation, or turns on shell execution tracing — three unrelated meanings sharing one letter. | cli-flags |
| -y, --yes, --assume-yes (Auto-Yes) | Automatically answer "yes" to all confirmation prompts. Used in scripts where you can't respond interactively. | cli-flags |
| :wq (write & quit) | Vim: save the file and close the editor. The legendary "how do I exit Vim" answer. | keyboard-shortcuts |
| /A (Anchored) | Forces the pattern to match only at the very start of the subject string (or immediately after the previous match), like an implicit ^. | regex-flags |