From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
glitch \glitch\ n.
1. A fault or defect in a system, plan, or machine.
Syn: bug.
[WordNet 1.5]
2. (Elect.) A brief surge or interruption in the voltage in
an electrical circuit or device.
[PJC]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
glitch
n 1: a fault or defect in a computer program, system, or machine
[syn: {bug}, {glitch}]
From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
glitch
/glich/
[very common; from German ?glitschig? slippery, via Yiddish ?glitshen?, to
slide or skid]
1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, continuity, or
program function. Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric
service is specifically called a power glitch (also {power hit}), of grave
concern because it usually crashes all the computers. In jargon, though, a
hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and then forgot how he or she
intended to complete it might say, ?Sorry, I just glitched?.
2. vi. To commit a glitch. See {gritch}.
3. vt. [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at a time.
{WAITS} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling,
which is distracting to the eye.
4. obs. Same as {magic cookie}, sense 2.
All these uses of glitch derive from the specific technical meaning the
term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is now techspeak. A
glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs
change to some {random} value for some very brief time before they settle
down to the correct value. If another circuit inspects the output at just
the wrong time, reading the random value, the results can be very wrong and
very hard to debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic
{heisenbug}s).
[73-06-04]
Coping with a hydraulic {glitch}.
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