The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
Blue Screen of Death
n.
[common] This term is closely related to the older Black Screen of Death
but much more common (many non-hackers have picked it up). Due to the
extreme fragility and bugginess of Microsoft Windows, misbehaving
applications can readily crash the OS (and the OS sometimes crashes itself
spontaneously). The Blue Screen of Death, sometimes decorated with hex
error codes, is what you get when this happens. (Commonly abbreviated BSOD
.) The following entry from the Salon Haiku Contest, seems to have
predated popular use of the term:
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death
No one hears your screams.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
Blue Screen of Death
BSOD
(BSOD) The infamous white-on-blue text screen which
appears when Microsoft Windows crashes. BSOD is mostly seen
on the 16-bit systems such as Windows 3.1, but also on
Windows 95 and apparently even under Windows NT 4. It is
most likely to be caused by a GPF, although Windows 95 can
do it if you've removed a required CD-ROM from the drive.
It is often impossible to recover cleanly from a BSOD.
The acronym BSOD is sometimes used as a verb, e.g. "Windoze
just keeps BSODing on me today".
(1998-09-08)