ad-hockery

ad-hockery /ad-hok'*r-ee/ n.  [Purdue] 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}.