kludge

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 28, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>kludge</strong> &#149; \KLOOJ\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p>A kludge is a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/programming">programming</a> problem.</p> <p>// Andy knocked out a hasty <em>kludge</em> to circumvent the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glitch">glitch</a> until a more robust solution could be developed.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kludge">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“I briefly considered purchasing a new desk for the office. But the one that several people at <em>The Verge</em> recommended … usually runs around $600 or so, and I had other expenses to deal with. … So I began to see if I could come up with a <em>kludge</em> that would give me what amounted to a standing desk.” — Barbara Krasnoff, <em>TheVerge.com</em>, 16 Aug. 2022</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>As long as the origins of <em>kludge</em> (also spelled <em>kluge</em>) are uncertain, any attempt to pin them down will itself be a bit of a kludge—that is, a makeshift solution. The writer Jackson W. Granholm, once thought to have coined the word, offered his own when he wrote in his 1962 article “How to design a kludge” that it came from the German word <em>klug</em>, meaning “smart” or “witty.” This connection <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kludge#word-history">is unlikely on both phonetic and semantic grounds</a>, however, and in any event the word already existed. A decade earlier, in an article recounting military folklore acquired from ex-soldiers, Agnes Nolan Underwood related a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shaggy-dog">shaggy-dog</a> story about a sailor nam