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gritch

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gritch /grich/ [MIT] 1. /n./ A complaint (often caused by a glitch). 2. /vi./ To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).

Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from glitch, with which it is often confused. Back in the early 1960s, when `glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art, the Burton House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote complaints, suggestions, and witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word "gritch" was described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and "bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at least historically incorrect.

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