Did you know?
There’s a glitch in the etymology of glitch—it may come from the Yiddish glitsh, meaning “slippery place,” but that’s not certain. Print use of glitch referring to a brief unexpected surge of electrical current dates to the mid-20th century. Astronaut John Glenn, in his 1962 book Into Orbit, felt the need to explain the term to his readers: “Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it.” Today, the word can be used of any minor malfunction or snag. If you’re a gamer you might even take advantage of a glitch that causes something unexpected, and sometimes beneficial, to happen in the game.
Examples of glitch in a Sentence
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR, 3 Dec. 2025
The glitch was discovered after a recent incident (October 30) on a JetBlue flight in which the plane unexpectedly lost altitude, and passengers were injured.
—Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 30 Nov. 2025
Because of this, many artists lip-sync to pre-recorded tracks at the annual parade, which took some fans by surprise in 2018 when a technical glitch revealed that not all the performances were live.
—Jordana Comiter, PEOPLE, 27 Nov. 2025
The culprit was a glitch in what should have been a routine CrowdStrike automatic software update, leading to flight delays and medical and police networks going down for hours.
—Kevin Collier, NBC news, 23 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for glitch
Cite this Entry
“Glitch.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/glitch. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.
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glitch
noun
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