Words: glitch [AHED]

NOUN: 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.
ETYMOLOGY: Probably from Yiddish glitsh, a slip, lapse, from glitshn, to slip, from Middle High German glitschen, alteration of glIten, to glide, from Old High German glItan. See ghel-2 in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS: glitchy —ADJECTIVE
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.”