Talk:glitch

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

glitch

Rfd-redundant. Video game sense seems to be some kind of special case of first sense or an idiosyncratic usage, but I leave this to specialists in this context. DCDuring TALK 17:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Not sure. Look at the example sentences. Whether they are typical and reasonable I don't know, but if so it seems (for the noun) we can "perform a glitch", as though it's a technique or skill; for sense 1 we would say something like "cause a glitch". Same applies to the verb, where we have "glitch into" and glitching appears to be a deliberate process or action rather than a momentary tweak. Equinox 17:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

If we had citations of real usage in that sense, I could agree. I was hoping that someone could vouch for the usage. DCDuring TALK 14:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you even look? http://www.google.com/search?q=%22he%20glitched%22&sa=N&hl=en&tab=pw gives lots for just one form, http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22he+glitched+into%22&btnG=Search has really precise examples. The old form of the word was used to reference a thing that malfunctioned, now is used to reference a person doing a specific action. --Connel MacKenzie 02:20, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't look. I often leave senses outside my experience for someone else to cite. I thought we had some folks who like or know gaming terms. DCDuring TALK 11:34, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Kept, per Connel who has provided evidence. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Engineering definition too specific

The engineering definition given, which is "a signal which does not remain active for a full clock period," is too specific. In current usage (at least where I work in Toronto) a "glitch" can be any unexpected/unintended behaviour in an electrical signal, especially if the signal spontaneously returns to expected/intended behaviour after a period of time. If a signal misbehaviour worsens over time or continues until the system is reset or powered off, it is called "instability" rather than "a glitch." The term "glitch" is not restricted to clocked, or even digital, signals; it applies to analog signals too. "Glitch" is an informal term which, by itself, conveys no information except that the phenomenon is unwanted and should be stopped. 2607:FEA8:3D1F:F592:64BE:1676:7079:BE24 01:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Additional citations

I found several older mentions of the term, though they weren't exactly natural uses (many of them had the word in quotes).

• 1953 September-October, “Editorials – Don't Look Like This”, in Harvey L. Miller, editor, Maryland, volume XXIV, number 6, University of Maryland Alumni, page 2:

  He had home work to do and stashed it out under a giant oak, quite sure that, come Sonnenschein, he'd glitch right out there and find all the problems neatly worked out.

  I have no idea what this one is saying.

• 1955 November 23, “They Talk of Pigeons and Glitch [advertisement]”, in Variety:

  And when he talks of "glitch" with a fellow technician, he means a low frequency interference which appears as a narrow horizontal bar moving vertically through the picture.

  Advertisement that appeared in a few works in 1955 (this is the earliest one on archive.org).

• 1959 April 11, “How to cut TV tape costs”, in Sponsor Magazine, volume 13, number 15, page 43:

  "Glitch" is slang for the "momentary jiggle" that occurs at the editing point if the sync pulses don't match exactly in the splice. ("Glitch" probably comes from a German or Yiddish word meaning a slide, a glide, or a slip.)

  This is slightly different from our definition, but it gives the same etymology.

• 1959 July 25, “Glossary – A handy list of film and tape terms”, in Sponsor's Air Media Basics, volume 13, page 174:

  Glitch: Expression for a momentary picture aberration, such as that occasionally accompanying a splice.

  Issue 30 was a 2-parter, with this as the second part (according to page 4 they annually did an "Air Media Basics" issue).

• 1961 September, “Track down that visible hum”, in PF [PhotoFact] Reporter, page 44:

  Another real howler that you'll find occasionally, if you're unlucky, is the "glitch." […] Although it sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, the glitch is merely a small pip in the power-supply output voltage, due to an obscure trouble in the filter. […] The typical glitch causes a narrow bar to move slowly up or down the screen. […] Glitches can be traced by looking for stray pips in the power-supply ripple waveform, as demonstrated in Fig. 6.

  Also includes an image. This work may be in public domain (I'm not 100% sure).

• 1961 October, Jerome B. Hammack, Jack C. Heberlig, The Mercury-Redstone Program, NASA - Space Task Group, →LCCN, page 27:

  It was deduced that a "glitch" with concurrent voltage drop caused a reset of the 60-second timer after retropack release on the MR-3 flight, and thus the cockpit telelight did not indicate retropack release.

  I'm pretty sure 2238-61 is an LCCN, but it doesn't seem to exist on the LOC website.

Hopefully this is useful in some way. --Pokechu22 (talk) 21:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)