Crock (slang)

A crock is a botched attempt or design to achieve something, particularly in engineering. An automobile with intentionally designed square wheels would be a crock. Crock itself is a slang word, meaning something which is broken down, worn out or nonsense.

Most of Rube Goldberg's or Heath Robinson's unlikely machines were crocks, and therefore regarded as funny. In absolute CONTRAST, however, there is little which is more condemnatory in an engineering context than to declare something a crock.

A kludge, by contrast, is typically something that works, albeit clumsily. A kludged design which did not work will probably also be a crock.

An early use of the term occurred at the MIT Model Railroad Club, and from there moved to computing and into computing terminology.

According to the Jargon File, the use of the word "crock" as engineering jargon is connected to its use for dishware by the American scatologism crock of [...], for more extreme examples of what would otherwise be known as [...].

In sport, especially football, the word crocked can also be used as a synonym for injured, thus describing a sportsperson who is hurt to the extent that he or she is rendered unable to compete.

Crock has definitely a bad connotation and can be associated to "crock of [...]", "crook", etc... The origin of this word can come from the french word "escro" which can be translated as "thief", "liar", "disingenuous", "[...]".