crufty

[very common; origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy']

1. Poorly built, possibly over-complex. The {canonical} example is "This is standard old crufty {DEC} software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of crufty holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to DEC software so old that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking more like `f' characters.
2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup.
3. Generally unpleasant.
4. (sometimes spelled cruftie) n. A small crufty object (see {frob}); often one that doesn't fit well into the scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or, collectively, {random} cruft)."

   This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at Harvard University which is part of the old physics building; it's said to have been the physics department's radar lab during WWII. To this day (early 1993) the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk. MIT or Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the term as a knock on the competition.

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