Crock
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the dishware, see Crock (dishware).
- For the American comic strip, see Crock (comic).
Especially in engineering, a crock is a botched attempt or design to achieve something. An automobile with intentionally designed square wheels would be a crock.
Most of Rube Goldberg's or Heath Robinson's unlikely machines were crocks. Because they were crocks, they were funny. In absolute contrast, there is little more condemnatory in an engineering context than to declare something a crock.
A kludge, by contrast is typically something that works, however clumsily. A kludge'd design which didn't actually work, will probably also be a crock.
The term was early used at the MIT Model Railroad Club, and from there moved to computing and into computing terminology.
