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

[Ben Zimmer]

It would be nice if there were any written evidence (say, internal memos at
GE) to back up the Kravitz claim, since that would be a great antedating of
the earliest cite given by the OED and elsewhere for "kludge" (Jackson
Granholm's Feb. 1962 article in Datamation, "How to Design a Kludge"). As
it stands, though, "Kravitz's Large Unwieldy Giant Enigma" seems like an
unlikely backronym, along the lines of "glitch" getting backronymized as
"Gremlins Lurking In The Computer Hardware." I do think it's plausible that
the "kluge" spelling came first, and I'd be willing to accept that its
origins are from German "klug" meaning "clever" (another theory discussed
in "Technobabble")... but again, some written substantiation would be nice.

As for "kludgy," it could perhaps be pushed back earlier than 1970, but not
by much, I'd guess.

On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 9:49 AM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>
> 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.
>

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