woofer

The particular speaker cone in a speaker that handles the low-frequency sound. Used to name the largest diameter speaker cone in a speaker, regardless of how large or small it is. If you try and run too much signal through a speaker, you will overdrive them and get a nasty distortion sound. People do this in their car stereos all the time, which is really annoying.

woofer n.

[University of Waterloo] Some varieties of wide paper for printers have a perforation 8.5 inches from the left margin that allows the excess on the right-hand side to be torn off when the print format is 80 columns or less wide. The right-hand excess may be called `woofer'. This term (like tweeter) has been in use at Waterloo since 1972, but is elsewhere unknown. In audio jargon, the word refers to the bass speaker(s) on a hi-fi.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, this entry manually entered by rootbeer277.