Bug is an old word.
There was/is a UK/USA difference in its use.
Brits most frequently used it for disease-causing microorganisms:
" I picked up a tummy -bug on holiday on the Med."
The cousins are given to calling all linneaus "vermes", ( creepy-crawlies in Britspeak ) "Bugs", especially insects!
Although already in use preWWII, it was the cold war that saw the greatest use of "BUG" for miniature/hidden microphones, later cams as well, and transmitters, telephone wiretaps, and similar -> to bug = to instal such and to (secretly/ illicitly electronically) eavesdrop( a 1500 year old word for deliberate secret spying listening, via hiding behind curtains etc It was a a 700 year old statutary offence, hearkening after our discourse, until Parliament repealed the statute barely before the end of the cold war )
"Our Moscow embassy was bugged every which way"
See urban dictionary .com, wikipedia, etc for many, many other derived words and uses.
Oddly enough, "BUG"(-> to debug, etc,) was used to designate
INADVERTENT programme or computer or appliance malfunction.
"This program's got a bug in it."
"They havent got the bugs out of the jupiter probe planning yet. "
The millenium bug scare was because many programmers had not drawn up programs that considered the possibility of dates after 1999!
Whereas VIRUSES are deliberate sabotage.
There a re ever more words to describe varieties of virus.
TROJANS ( for the trojan horse)
WORMS
MAL-WARE (from malevolent ware, or goods for sale)
etc
And For most of the 20th cent., although getting well-known in WWII, GREMLINS have been the mythical( or real?) demon-like creatures that cause any electrical or electronic device, appliance gadget, or apllication, to fail or malfunction .
The mistakes on my blogs aren't because I type with ten thumbs, as they say.
No.
Keyboard gremlins!
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