kludge

1. noun, slang Any system comprising several disparate parts or elements that have been poorly assembled or integrated together. Because it has been around for so long, their country's tax system has become a kludge of confusing, antiquated policies all balanced atop one another. Although it is very restrictive and tightly controlled, many people prefer the operating system's intuitive, streamlined design to the messy kludge of its competitor.

2. noun, slang Any hastily improvised solution or workaround that is awkward, inelegant, or unsophisticated. We had to reroute the power to a separate network and then feed it back into the one that was malfunctioning. It was an awkward kludge, to say the least, but it worked. The update is little more than a software kludge aimed at patching an exploit discovered by hackers.

3. verb, slang To create or implement such solutions or workarounds. I didn't have the parts necessary to fix the machine properly, so I just had to kludge it with whatever I had to hand. It's clear that they just kept kludging over the original code to keep the program working with changes made to the operating system throughout the years.