buggy

As an adjective, buggy means full of bugs or infested with bugs. This can literally refer to insects, as in a buggy swamp, or it can refer to the kind of bugs found in software or machines—glitches and programming errors.

As a noun, buggy refers to a small, wheeled cart or other vehicle, especially a horse-drawn carriage (often called a horse and buggy). There are several different vehicles that can be called a buggy.

Example: The beta version of the app is a little buggy, so we’ll need to do some additional testing before we release it to the users.

The first records of buggy as a noun referring to a vehicle come from around 1760. It’s unknown where this word came from. But the origin of the word buggy as an adjective meaning “infested with insects” is very simple: it’s the word bug, meaning “insect,” and the adjective-forming suffix –y, meaning “filled with.” The first records of this use come from around 1700.

Places are called buggy when there’s a lot of insects swarming around. Swamps and marshes are often buggy. The word can also be used to describe an immediate area or environment when there’s a lot of bugs around, as in It’s really humid and buggy outside right now, so let’s stay inside. In both cases, the word usually implies that insects like mosquitoes are flying around and being a nuisance.

The word bug is commonly used to refer to software errors, and describing software as buggy means there’s a lot of errors and things going wrong. Another word for this is glitchy (a synonym of this sense of bug is glitch). You might describe an app as buggy if it keeps crashing or malfunctioning.

When buggy is used as a noun, it can refer to several different kinds of wheeled vehicles. Most commonly it refers to a carriage pulled by a horse. In the United States and Canada, the word buggy typically refers to four-wheeled carriages, while in the U.K. and India it refers to two-wheeled ones. In parts of the U.S. and Canada, people such as the Amish use buggies for transportation. People often use the phrase horse and buggy to refer to the vehicle and the horse or horses that pull it.

Buggy can also refer to a baby carriage (a pram in the U.K.), an industrial cart (such as the kind used to transport mining materials), or a small motorized vehicle (such as dune buggy). In certain parts of the U.S. and Canada, people call a shopping cart a buggy.

What are some other forms related to buggy?

• buginess (noun)
• buggier (comparative adjective)
• buggiest (superlative adjective)

What are some synonyms for buggy?

• carriage
• cart
• glitchy

What are some words that share a root or word element with buggy? 

• bug

What are some words that often get used in discussing buggy?

• software
• app
• error
• horse
• wheeled
• vehicle
• dune
• Amish

As an adjective, buggy is an informal but common word that means there’s a lot of bugs—either insects or glitches.

The hardest part of being a software manager is understanding that software takes the time it takes, and rushing it will slow it down and make it buggy.
Patience is everything.

— Eric Elliott (@_ericelliott) November 19, 2019

It’s December, yet in Florida it’s still hot, sticky, humid, buggy, and uncomfortable. Granted, I’m at a zoo rn, but today pretty much eliminates any chance of me moving here in the future. I am NOT built for this weather…

— Steel_General (@steel_general_7) December 28, 2018

Good morning to everyone except people that can't be bothered to walk the extra ten feet to return their buggy to the cart return

— JJ Ross (@JJRossReaders) December 30, 2019

Which of the following terms would NOT be used to describe software that’s considered buggy?

A. glitchy
B. perfect
C. malfunctioning
D. full or errors