Glitch

A railway station display affected by a visual glitch, corrupting some of the text

A glitch is a short-lived technical fault, such as a transient one that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games. More generally, all types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches.

A glitch, which is slight and often temporary, differs from a more serious bug which is a genuine functionality-breaking problem. Alex Pieschel, writing for Arcade Review, said: "'bug' is often cast as the weightier and more blameworthy pejorative, while 'glitch' suggests something more mysterious and unknowable inflicted by surprise inputs or stuff outside the realm of code".[1] The word itself is sometimes humorously described as being short for "gremlins lurking in the computer hardware".[2]

  1. ^ Pieschel, Alex (December 8, 2014). "Glitches: A Kind of History". Arcade Review. Archived from the original on August 12, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
  2. ^ [1], acronymsandslang