runes pl.n. 1. Anything that requires {heavy wizardry} or {black art}
   to {parse}: core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language you
   haven't a clue how to read. Not quite as bad as {line noise}, but close.
   Compare {casting the runes}, {Great Runes}. 2. Special display
   characters (for example, the high-half graphics on an IBM PC). 3.
   [borderline techspeak] 16-bit characters from the Unicode multilingual
   character set.


Source: The Jargon File