A playful name for electrical current popularized in tool-teardown culture, treating it as a crowd of irritable pixies that live in wires and outlets. Containment devices keep them in, and loose wiring lets them out. The phrase covers both the power that makes a machine run and the shock that teaches respect for it.
Heard on the job
Unplug it before you open that grinder, the angry pixies don't care that you're in a hurry.
Also heard as
- pixies
Related terms
Magic smoke
Joke that electrical parts run on smoke sealed inside them, because once it gets out they stop working.
Chooch
To run, work or go properly, as in does it chooch; as a noun, the power or oomph a machine has.
Thumb detector
Shop joke name for any pinch point, blade or mechanism that is especially good at finding fingers.