Is there a term (English or not) for when people make something work for them in a way that is busted as hell but charmingly effective and doesnt need to be improved? Im thinking of dragging windows around in a screen recording frame as a way of editing videos rn, but also stuff like idk using a keychain ring on a pants zipper to loop around a button and keep it up, etc. The emphasis is more on the unexpectedness or laterality of approaches than them being "bad."
"Hack" or "kludge" implies too much jankiness and is usually negative, "macgyvering" or "Jerry rigging" is too specific to using only what is on hand to do something, there is a Brazilian word "gambiarra" that I think is quite close but I don't have the cultural context to tell.
Edit: I think gambiarra is what im looking for here, thanks @catzilla !
@jonny I describe such things as being "ad hoc" if I'm not aiming for any particular tonal connotation, and I like to appropriate stuffy math speak terms like "novel method" if I'm trying to also express delight and/or sarcasm.
@jonny There’s an Indian subcontinental term called “jugaad”. I’m not familiar enough with it to tell if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but I think it’s in the ballpark. But it might have more of a sense of a long term hack, a “this is not ideal but it’s clever and will work for years” kind of thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad
@gaurav
I love this and also love that its a near synonym with improvised vehicles. That sense of temporariness is why I was thinking "kludge" and "Jerry-rig" weren't what im looking for, so if this is more longterm improvisation then I love it and am tucking it away ♥
@jonny@gaurav a person who does jugaad is called a "jugaadu insaan" - transliteration would be a "hacky human". [side note: us Indians tend to add a 'u' at the words and imo it makes those words sound cute hehe]. I like the term frugal innovators or jugaadu which is more positive sounding than calling such people hackers.
@manisha @gaurav
I am going to look up a pronunciation recording of "jugaadu" because THAT is the cutest term for it ive heard yet. Is the u suffix sort of like "ito" in Spanish or "-y" in English?
@jonny@catzilla As a Brit, I’d use “bodge”, which can be used affectionately about your own work. “What a great bodge!”. When I did student TV we had an annual competition called the Golden Bodge.
@rogbeer
Ha, fair! Thats almost giving too much dignity though, part of what im thinking is specifically that its a workaround, a low class patch that nonetheless gets the job done and thats as good or better than the "official" thing, where to my ear "invention" would be positioned as the official thing.
@geordie
Yes yes, theres a slight difference in that "life hacks" are more general, something that can ostensibly be done by anyone in a common circumstance, where im thinking more of a contextual fix given specific circumstances, but its definitely in the neighborhood (or was)
Neuroscientists live and die by our hacks, you'll never see more elaborate systems of aluminum foil, hot glue, Vaseline, BNC cables and Arduinos. I would like a more loving term for that.
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