The Magic Word

In the Unix world, asking "what's the magic word" isn't about saying "please" – it's about typing "sudo" before your command. For the uninitiated, sudo (superuser do) temporarily grants you god-like powers over your system. Regular users are peasants until they utter this incantation. It's basically the difference between "I'd like to delete this critical system file" and "I WILL delete this critical system file, and you'll thank me for it."