monkey patch
monkey patch · monkey patches
A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the…A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.
Meaning
1 senses(slang)A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.
Origin
Apparently from earlier guerrilla patch (“code that sneakily changes other code”), understApparently 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).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source