monkey patch

The English word “monkey patch” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.

verb

To alter the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.

Etymology

Apparently from earlier guerrilla 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).

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More English words

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monkey orchestra
monkey orchid
monkey parade
monkey points
monkey pole
monkey pot
monkey press

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.