Alternative forms

• monkeypatch, monkey-patch

Etymology

Apparently 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.^[1] Or simply derived from monkey (“to mess with”, verb).

Noun

monkey patch (plural monkey patches)Category:English lemmas#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English nouns#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English countable nouns#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English multiword terms#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#MONKEYPATCHCategory:Pages with entries#MONKEY%20PATCHCategory:Pages with 1 entry#MONKEY%20PATCH

1. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#MONKEYPATCH slangCategory:English slang#MONKEYPATCH) A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.

Verb

monkey patch (third-person singular simple present monkey patches, present participle monkey patching, simple past and past participle monkey patched)Category:English lemmas#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English verbs#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English multiword terms#MONKEYPATCHCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#MONKEYPATCHCategory:Pages with entries#MONKEY%20PATCHCategory:Pages with 1 entry#MONKEY%20PATCH

1. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#MONKEYPATCH slangCategory:English slang#MONKEYPATCH, transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#MONKEYPATCH) To alter the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.
   • 2007, Philip C. Plumlee, Test Driven Ajax (on Rails):

     Even though that works with some browsers, others provide Anchor objects without click() methods. Add this magic code to your application.js, to Monkey Patch a JavaScript click() event:

     Category:English terms with quotations#MONKEYPATCH

References

Further reading

• monkey patch on Wikipedia.Wikipedia