[Ads-l] "kludgy, adj." - Word of the Day from the OED

[Nancy Friedman]

There's a long discussion of "kluge" (the original spelling) in John A.
Barry's "Technobabble" (1991). Several of his sources from the electronics
and aerospace industries give anecdotal support to the word's origins in
the mid- to late 1950s. One source says *kluge* was coined in 1956 by
Bernie Kravitz, who worked at General Electric's Heavy Military Equipment
Division in Syracuse, NY. According to this source, *kluge* was an acronym
for Kravitz's Large Unwieldy Giant Enigma.

Nancy Friedman
Chief Wordworker
www.wordworking.com
http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com
tel 510 652-4159
cel 510 304-3953
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On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 5:56 AM Martin Kaminer <martin.kaminer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This has *got* to be older than 1970, no?
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: <oedwotd at oup.com>
> Date: Thu, May 16, 2019 at 3:33 AM
> Subject: "kludgy, adj." - Word of the Day from the OED
> To: <OEDWOTD-AMER-L at webber.uk.hub.oup.com>
>
> Your word for Thursday 16th May is: kludgy, adj.
>
> kludgy, adj.
> [‘Made or designed in an awkward, makeshift, or haphazard manner;
> inelegant; not user-friendly.’]
> Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈklʌdʒi/, /ˈkluːdʒi/,  U.S. /ˈkludʒi/
> Forms:  19– cludgey,   19– cludgy,   19– kludgey,   19– kludgy,   19–
> klugy.
> Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: kludge n., -y
> suffix1.
> Etymology: <  kludge n. + -y suffix1.
>  slang (chiefly Computing).
>   Made or designed in an awkward, makeshift, or haphazard manner;
> inelegant; not user-friendly.
> 1970  L. Uhr Flexible Ling. Pattern Recognition(Univ. Wisconsin
> Computer Sci. Dept. Techn. Rep. 103) 40 They seem to be rather kludgey
> systems, hard to code and refine.
> 1971 Electronic Equipm. Engin.  Jan. 42/2 This arrangement looks good
> but it's a bit klugy so the set-up procedure is slow.
> 1984 PC  13 Nov. 131/2 This design is a kludgy way to handle RAM.
> 1992 Personal Computer World  Feb. 269/3 After using a number of
> Windows-based programs DOS feels kludgy.
> 2010 Atlantic Monthly  July 80/1 People will be more likely to pay for
> consumer-friendly apps..than they are to subscribe to the same old
> kludgy Web site they have been using freely for years.
> ________________________________
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org