Jargon 2.0

Munge (v.)

A recent post on Slashdot noted that some online magazine figured out a way to “munge” its articles so that Google could not produce the actual full copy of the article. The editors had randomly reorganized the sentences in the online version. But by keeping the underlying metatags – or html keywords – intact, the search engine could find the key concepts of the article and point the searcher to the original source.

“Munge” actually goes back to the 1940s and means to transform something into a totally different, sometimes imperfect shape or condition.

Coders use the term to describe what an amateur’s software project typically involves, i.e.: “He munged that database beyond recognition.”