[ale] cruft

[Jim Kinney]

+1

detritus is another


On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Beddingfield, Allen <allen at ua.edu> wrote:

>  It is a word I use frequently when looking at some of the legacy junk
> around my workplace!
>
>
>  *From*: Sean Kilpatrick [mailto:kilpatms at gmail.com]
> *Sent*: Friday, March 21, 2014 06:58 PM Central Standard Time
> *To*: ale at ale.org <ale at ale.org>
> *Subject*: [ale] cruft
>
>
> This is a word I have used for years.
>
>  When I used it tonight at dinner my wife asked me what it meant.
>
> And, as we are both liberal arts types, she wanted to know its origin.
>
> So I grabbed the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), Volume "C" only to
> discover that the word isn't there. It also isn't in my (weighty) American
> Heritage Dictionary.
>
> WTF
>
>  But Google is your friend. :)
>
>  This word comes to us out of MIT, where it first appeared in the club
> dictionary of the (MIT) Tech Model Railroad Club in 1959!
>
> It -- perhaps -- arose out of MIT's Cruft Laboratory (c. 1915) which was
> used as a radar lab during WW II.
>
>  So how many knew the origin of this word? And its meaning: detritus,
> left over crud, especially these days leftover code that leads to
> dependency hell?
>
>  Sean
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain


*http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
<http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*
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