I have heard it used but don't know the meaning. Anyone care to shed some light?

It means you F'ed up your PSP and its worthless. It means somethign prolly went wrong when you flashed your PSP to a new FW. But now days with recovery mode you dont hear of it anymore because you can save a brick 99% of the time now.

Basically if youre not running custom fw a bricked psp wont run at all. Itll turn on but just show a black screen, cant do anything. The custom fw's let you recover a bricked psp, but other than that it would be dead.

I would suggest Dark_Alex's 3.03 OE-C. Once installed, just hold the R button while booting the PSP to access recovery/options menu.

Cool, thanks. You are all quite helpful.

so there is no way to ever get a bricked psp to work again. no hope at all.?

it means that your psp is like a brick... why??? coz you can't do anything with it (except if you'll use it as a paper weight LOL )...

The only way to unbrick a psp that doesnt have custom fw is by using the undiluted platinum mod chip. But thats an expesive endeavor it is own right.