Kludging or

Something I’m very good at!

Languages are always evolving with new additions every year depending upon technical improvements, life-style changes and the like.

My main languages are English, French and German and it’s fun to see how they evolve differently. I admire the Germans in particular as if they need a new word to describe something they simply string a few old words together and presto – a new word that means exactly the right thing. In English and in French we tend to evolve words from more basic elements, ie slang, street talk and the like.

The above word showed up in 1962. According to A.Word.A.Day (one of my all-time favorite sites: https://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html) it has to be labeled origin unknown as although it appeared in an article by Jackson W. Granholm in Datamation magazine: “How to Design a Kludge”, various origins for his use of it have been suggested: German, Scots, military jargon, from the name of a paper feeder,” according to A.Word.A.Day.

MEANING:

noun: An inelegant, improvised solution to a problem.
verb tr.: To improvise a haphazard solution to a problem.

Latest example of my own kludging – hanging the lights on the Christmas tree.

N.B. I could also think of “klutz” for klu words but was amazed to find that it wasn’t in my hard copy of the Miriam Webster dictionary – 1966. Things change fast.