waits

n. group of singers who collects donations at Christmas

n. staying where one is; expectation; ambush; member of a choir that sings on Christmas

v. remain in a location until a specific occurrence; be ready or available; work as a waiter; work as an attendant; postpone

WAITS was a heavily modified variant of the Digital Equipment Corporation's Monitor operating system (later renamed to, and better known as TOPS-10) for the PDP-6 and PDP-10 mainframe computers, used at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) up until 1990; the mainframe computer it ran on also went by the name of "SAIL".
See more at Wikipedia.org...

Waits or Waites were British town pipers. From medieval times up to the beginning of the 19th century, every British town and city of any note had a band of Waites. Their duties varied from time to time and place to place, but included playing their instruments through the town at night, waking the townsfolk on dark winter mornings by playing under their windows, welcoming Royal visitors by playing at the town gates, and leading the Mayor's procession on civic occasions.
See more at Wikipedia.org...

Noun
1. time during which some action is awaited; "instant replay caused too long a delay"; "he ordered a hold in the action"
(synonym) delay, hold, time lag, postponement
(hypernym) pause, intermission, break, interruption, suspension
(hyponym) extension
(derivation) hold off, hold back
2. the act of waiting (remaining inactive in one place while expecting something); "the wait was an ordeal for him"
(synonym) waiting
(hypernym) inactivity
Verb
1. stay in one place and anticipate or expect something; "I had to wait on line for an hour to get the tickets"
(hyponym) ambush, scupper, bushwhack, waylay, lurk, ambuscade, lie in wait
(derivation) waiting
2. wait before acting
(synonym) hold off, hold back
(hypernym) act, move
(hyponym) hold out
(derivation) delay, hold, time lag, postponement
3. look forward to the probable occurrence of; "We were expecting a visit from our relatives"; "She is looking to a promotion"; "he is waiting to be drafted"
(synonym) expect, look, await
(hyponym) expect
(verb-group) expect, anticipate
(derivation) waiter
4. serve as a waiter in a restaurant; "I'm waiting on tables at Maxim's"
(hypernym) work
(derivation) waiter, server

/wayts/ The mutant cousin of TOPS-10 used on a handful of systems at SAIL up to 1990. There was never an "official" expansion of WAITS (the name itself having been arrived at by a rather sideways process), but it was frequently glossed as "West-coast Alternative to ITS". Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence. The early screen modes of Emacs, for example, were directly inspired by WAITS's "E" editor - one of a family of editors that were the first to do "real-time editing", in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, and the Sun workstations. Bucky bits were also invented there thus, the ALT key on every IBM PC is a WAITS legacy. One notable WAITS feature seldom duplicated elsewhere was a news-wire interface that allowed WAITS hackers to read, store, and filter AP and UPI dispatches from their terminals; the system also featured a still-unusual level of support for what is now called "multimedia" computing, allowing analog audio and video signals to be switched to programming terminals.
Ken Shoemake adds:
Some administrative body told us we needed a name for the operating system, and that "SAIL" wouldn't do. (Up to that point I don't think it had an official name.) So the anarchic denizens of the lab proposed names and voted on them. Although I worked on the OS used by CCRMA folks (a parasitic subgroup), I was not writing WAITS code. Those who were, proposed "SAINTS", for (I think) Stanford AI New Time-sharing System. Thinking of ITS, and AI, and the result of many people using one machine, I proposed the name WAITS. Since I invented it, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it had no official meaning. Nevertheless, the lab voted that as their favorite; upon which the disgruntled system programmers declared it the "Worst Acronym Invented for a Time-sharing System"! But it was in keeping with the creative approach to acronyms extant at the time, including self-referential ones. For me it was fun, if a little unsettling, to have an "acronym" that wasn't. I have no idea what the voters thought. :)
[Jargon File]
(2003-11-17)

wan4 shi4 ju4 bei4, zhi3 qian4 dong1 feng1
Everything is ready, except the east wind.
To have everything ready except an important condition or opportunity. The second half of this expression may be left out, then meaning that everything is indeed ready.

shou3 zhu1 dai4 tu4
Waiting by a tree for a hare to turn up.
Referring to a person who waits for gains without pains.