1. To wait for an event that will never occur. "The system is hanging because it can' t read from the crashed drive". See wedged, hung. 2. To wait for SOme event to occur to hang around until SOmething happens. "The program displays a menu and then hangs until you type a character." Compare block. 3. To attach a peripheral device, especially in the construction "hang off": "We' re going to hang another tape drive off the file server." Implies a device attached with cables, rather than SOmething that is strictly inside the machine' s chassis.