Pylimitics

In the computing field there’s a word: “kludge.” It’s mysterious in a couple of ways. It means a solution to a problem — usually a software solution — that’s clumsy, thrown together, and inelegant, but works anyway (at least for the moment). 

The first mystery about “kludge” is how it’s spelled. The word is generally pronounced to rhyme with “scrooge,” but the spelling suggests that it should rhyme with “judge.” Occasionally you’ll see the alternate spelling “kluge,” but that’s so uncommon it’s almost a misspelling. If it’s even possible to misspell such an informal term. 

The second mystery about “kludge” is when it appeared. The New Hacker’s Dictionary is quite sure that it was coined by J. W. Granholm in an article in Datamation magazine in 1962. The word did appear in that magazine (in the very title of the article, in fact, which was How to Design a Kludge), but there are also numerous reports of the word being used in the 1950s by people working with the few computers that existed in those days. There are also reports that it was used in the US Navy during World War Two, where it was used to refer to equipment (generally electronic) that worked on shore but failed after leaving port. There is even a report that the word is even older, and based on a device that was used with a mechanical printing press. The device was designed in 1919, and was called a “Kluge paper feeder.” You’d think, of course, that if the paper feeder is really the source of the term, it must have been a very complex gadget that tended to break — but evidently it was pretty simple and reliable. 

Granholm himself seems to have thought he came up with the term; he said at one point that he borrowed it from the German word “klug” (smart). He’s definitely the one who added the “d”; even if he didn’t invent the word, all earlier examples have it spelled “kluge.” 

Anyway, it looks like“kludge” is itself a bit of a kludge, at least in terms of its origin.