ad-hockery /ad-hok'*r-ee/ [Purdue] n. 1. Gratuitous assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert systems, which lead to
the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior but are in fact
entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching against input
tokens that might be typing errors against a symbol table can make
it look as though a program knows how to spell. 2. Special-case
code to cope with some awkward input that would otherwise cause a
program to choke, presuming normal inputs are dealt with in
some cleaner and more regular way. Also called `ad-hackery',
`ad-hocity' (/ad-hos'*-tee/), `ad-crockery'. See also
ELIZA effect.