origins of "kludge"

[Wayne Smith]

> 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"
> 	<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
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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".