glitch

n.

1. A minor malfunction, mishap, or technical problem; a snag: a computer glitch; a navigational glitch; a glitch in the negotiations.
2. A false or spurious electronic signal caused by a brief, unwanted surge of electric power.
3. Astronomy. A sudden change in the period of rotation of a neutron star.

[Probably from Yiddish glitsh, a slip, lapse, from glitshn, to slip, from Middle High German glitschen, alteration of glīten, to glide, from Old High German glītan.]

glitchy glitch'y adj.

WORD HISTORY   Although glitch seems a word that people would always have found useful, it is first recorded in English in 1962 in the writing of John Glenn: "Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was 'glitch.' " Glenn then gives the technical sense of the word the astronauts had adopted: "Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical current." It is easy to see why the astronauts, who were engaged in a highly technical endeavor, might have generalized a term from electronics to cover other technical problems. Since then glitch has passed beyond technical use and now covers a wide variety of malfunctions and mishaps.

A temporary or random hardware malfunction. It is possible that a bug in a program may cause the hardware to appear as if it had a glitch in it and vice versa. At times it can be extremely difficult to determine whether a problem lies within the hardware or the software. See glitch attack.

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[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 heisenbugs).

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - uheld, funktionsfejl
v. tr. - forårsage en (funktions)fejl
v. intr. - duer ikke

Nederlands (Dutch)
plotselinge storing

Français (French)
n. - pépin (fam), (Comput) problème technique
v. tr. - causer un problème dans
v. intr. - avoir un pépin/un problème

Deutsch (German)
n. - (ugs.) Panne, (Comp.) Problem
v. - vereiteln

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ανεξήγητη ανωμαλία ή βλάβη
v. - παρουσιάζω ανεξήγητη βλάβη

Italiano (Italian)
anomalia, guasto

Português (Portuguese)
n. - pequeno infortúnio (m), problema (m) técnico de menor importância, sinal (m) eletrônico causado por breve e indesejada oscilação de corrente

Русский (Russian)
сбой (оборудования), дефект

Español (Spanish)
n. - mal funcionamiento, desperfecto, falla
v. tr. - provocar un desperfecto o falla
v. intr. - fallar, funcionar mal, descomponerse

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hake, avbrott, bug (data)
v. - bli tekniskt fel

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
小故障, 技术性的小毛病, 失灵, 低频干扰, 产生小故障, 自转突变

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 小故障, 技術性的小毛病, 失靈, 低頻干擾
v. tr. - 產生小故障
v. intr. - 自轉突變

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 오작동, 고장
v. tr. - (전기 기기가) 오작동을 하다
v. intr. - (전기 기기가) 오작동을 하다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - グリッチを起こす

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) خلل, مشكله فنيه (فعل) يحدث خللا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮תקלה, הפסקת פעולה (של ציוד וכו'), חריגה פתאומית מהמהלך התקין‬
v. tr. - ‮גרם תקלה‬
v. intr. - ‮התקלקל‬

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