Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Something that should not work, but does.
- noun A device assembled from components intended for disparate purposes.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Lorentz relativity was presented as a "kluge" to the Aether.
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In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption.
unalog 2008
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Because the brain is a kluge, things don't always happen in the most efficient or rational way.
Valerie Tarico: God's Emotions: What Are Emotions Anyway? (Part 4) Valerie Tarico 2010
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Because the brain is a kluge, things don't always happen in the most efficient or rational way.
Valerie Tarico: God's Emotions: What Are Emotions Anyway? (Part 4) Valerie Tarico 2010
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But let the "leadership" get involved (like Ares) - and you end up with a kluge of hardware designed in the 60s and 70s.
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I've been working through a kluge of user feedback and other approaches to IE6 testing.
What’s New In The Windows 7 Release Candidate | Lifehacker Australia 2009
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Von Kluge now demonstrated the passive-aggressive cleverness that had earned him the malicious although probably justified sobriquet of “Der kluge Hans,” clever Hans.
Deathride John Mosier 2010
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Constellation is a kluge of hardware designed in the 60s and 70s and pretty much says to the world - "this is the best we can do in america - recycle previous glory".
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I think the Ares I is a kluge of the first order, and Ares V's design is pretty nebulous.
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This year, Gates seeks to end further production of the superfluous C-17 transport and kill off a second engine for the high cost, kluge-like F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter."
Winslow T. Wheeler: Nightmare Budget Scenario at the Pentagon 2010
chained_bear commented on the word kluge
Not to be a wanker or anything... I think this might better be spelled kludge. I have an acquaintance of long standing who is well known by this moniker.
Of course this spelling gets the point across as well... which is the point of language itself.
February 6, 2007
reesetee commented on the word kluge
According to this article, it may have started out spelled this way, though. :-)
"Speculations on its origin abound: perhaps it descends from the German word klug, meaning clever, or from the 1930s-era Kluge brand paper feeder, which, according to The Hacker’s Dictionary of Computer Jargon, employed 'a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts and linkages.' Around midcentury, the word was adopted by the pioneers of early computing; a 1962 article defined a kluge (or kludge) as 'an ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.'" -- Annie Murphy Paul, "Patch Job," NYT Online, 4/27/08
April 30, 2008