Mung originated in 1958
After talking with a client at length about how someone had mishandled some data, she asked me if “munge” is a real word or just something I made up?
I was taken aback – I thought it was a real word! I looked it up in the dictionary and it was not there. I apologized for using geek speak with her but assured her that I had not made it up, it is an engineering term. Obviously she had understood the meaning – at least she never asked me what I meant exactly by “munge.”
So after we hung up I googled it, instead of looking it up in the dictionary, and found this amusing explanation of its 1958 origins on wonderful Wikipedia. In part:
In 1960 the backronym “Mash Until No Good” was created to describe Mung, and a while after it was revised to “Mung Until No Good”, making it one of the first recursive acronyms.
So how do you pronounce Mung?
Of course, the much older term is “bung it all up.” British Slang . to throw or shove carelessly or violently; sling.