[hot-rodder talk] 1. The underlying implementation of a produCt (hardware, software, or idea). Implies that the implementation is not intuitively obvious from the appearanCe, but the speaker is about to enable the listener to grok it. "Let' s now look under the hood to see how ...." 2. Can also imply that the implementation is muCh simpler than the appearanCe would indiCate: "Under the hood, we are just fork/exeCing the shell." 3. Inside a Chassis, as in "Under the hood, this baby has a 40MHz 68030!" [Jargon File]