origins of "kludge" - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

30 Mar 2005

...
  Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:23:12 +1200
 From: "Mike van Bokhoven" <mike at ambientdesign.com>
 Subject: Re: origins of "kludge"
 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
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  On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote:
 > The French word for "bell" is "cloche" which is pronounced not
 > un-similarly to kludge.  Thus, this word was bastardized by the
 > Americans and an unwieldy arrangement came to be known as   a cloche or
   later as
a Kludge.  Interesting.  I'd always assumed it was a corruption of some form
 of the German word 'kluge' (clever).  
 Me too. And I've seen a few etymologies/timelines that agree 
 with that, the
 'cloche' thing sounds a little far-fetched. But you never know...

 Here's a good summary of fairly official sources on this one:

 http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kludge

 M. 
That's probably correct.  In the 1990s I retained Cal. Berkeley math wiz
Elwyn Berlekamp as an expert on Reed-Solomon coding and he told me that
"kludge" was a rough contraction of "collossal" and "huge".