origins of "kludge"

[Mike van Bokhoven]

> 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.