force quit

English

Verb

force quit (third-person singular simple present force quits, present participle force quitting, simple past and past participle force quit or force quitted)

1. (transitive) (intransitive) To abort an unresponsive computer program, bypassing the usual closure process.
   • 1991 May 26, Kiran Wagle, “Re: Good Stuff & Bad Stuff about System 7”, in comp.sys.mac.system‎^[1] (Usenet), retrieved 2024-09-08:

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

   • 1991 July 24, Bill Johnston, “Teleport <-> Balloon Help conflict”, in comp.sys.mac.comm‎^[2] (Usenet), retrieved 2018-09-05, message-ID <59524@nigel.ee.udel.edu>:

     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.

   • 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^[3] (Usenet), retrieved 2018-09-05, message-ID <ewright.719169334@convex.convex.com>:

     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.