Technical, engineering and scientific slang for an ugly, crude and poorly designed solution, system or repair. It implies that the solution is unsatisfactory, possibly an interim or temporary arrangement and likely to work badly or inefficiently, be difficult to maintain, interface badly with other components or systems, likely to fail in service – and that it should be replaced with a better solution or system, or more complete repair as soon as possible. Kludges are often intended to be expedient and short term solutions but can be remarkable hard to replace and enduring because they become integrated into systems in ways that mean that an isolated update or solution is infeasible.