"monkey patch" meaning in English

See monkey patch in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: monkey patches [plural]
Etymology: Apparently from earlier guerilla patch (“code that sneakily changes other code”), understood as gorilla patch. A monkey patch was then a more carefully written instance of such a patch. Or simply derived from monkey (“to mess with”, verb). Etymology templates: {{m|en|guerilla patch|gloss=code that sneakily changes other code}} guerilla patch (“code that sneakily changes other code”), {{m|en|monkey|gloss=to mess with|pos=v}} monkey (“to mess with”, verb) Head templates: {{en-noun}} monkey patch (plural monkey patches)
  1. (programming slang) A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime. Tags: slang Categories (topical): Programming Synonyms: monkeypatch, monkey-patch
    Sense id: en-monkey_patch-en-noun-kozulUr0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 51 49 Topics: computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, programming, sciences

Verb

Forms: monkey patches [present, singular, third-person], monkey patching [participle, present], monkey patched [participle, past], monkey patched [past]
Etymology: Apparently from earlier guerilla patch (“code that sneakily changes other code”), understood as gorilla patch. A monkey patch was then a more carefully written instance of such a patch. Or simply derived from monkey (“to mess with”, verb). Etymology templates: {{m|en|guerilla patch|gloss=code that sneakily changes other code}} guerilla patch (“code that sneakily changes other code”), {{m|en|monkey|gloss=to mess with|pos=v}} monkey (“to mess with”, verb) Head templates: {{en-verb}} monkey patch (third-person singular simple present monkey patches, present participle monkey patching, simple past and past participle monkey patched)
  1. (programming slang, transitive) To alter the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime. Tags: slang, transitive Categories (topical): Programming
    Sense id: en-monkey_patch-en-verb-l7VsRk8J Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 51 49 Topics: computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, programming, sciences

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for monkey patch meaning in English (4.7kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.