Other forms: glitches, glitching, glitched
A glitch is a small sudden fault that makes a machine behave strangely for a moment. A software glitch, a glitch in the system, just a glitch.
It implies a fault that is brief, minor and often unexplained — a bug is a defect in the code, and a glitch is what the user sees. It has spread well beyond machines: a glitch in the schedule, a glitch in the plan. As a verb, to glitch means to fail briefly: the screen glitched. Note glitch art, a genre that deliberately uses digital errors as an aesthetic.
1nounglitchA small sudden fault that makes a machine behave oddly.
“A glitch in the computer system meant some customers were charged twice.”
2verbfailTo fail briefly and unexpectedly.
“The screen glitched twice and then settled.”
glitch is a brief fault.
Yiddish glitsh means a slip, from a German word meaning slippery. American space engineers took it up in the 1960s, and it reached the general public through NASA broadcasts.
German
glitschig — slippy
Yiddish
גליטש
English, today
glitch
Built from
Probably Yiddish גליטש, from German glitschig (“slippy”), from glitschen (“to slide, glide, slip”) + -ig (“-y”). Related to gleiten (“glide”). Cognate with French glisser (“to slip, slide, skid”). Popularized in the 1960s, by the US space program. Attested in 1962 by American astronaut John Glenn, in reference to spikes in electrical current.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Technology & Internet, Repair & Damage