glitch

Probably borrowed from Yiddish glitsh, from German glitschig ("slippy"), itself from glitschen ("to slide, glide, slip") plus the suffix -ig. It was popularized in the 1960s by the US space program, attested in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn used it to describe spikes in electrical current.

It began as a description of something physically slippery, then jumped into the language of spacecraft engineering to describe erratic electrical spikes, and from there widened into the general sense of any small, unexpected malfunction.

It's cognate with French glisser ("to slip, slide, skid") and related to German gleiten ("to glide") — all pointing back to the same idea of losing one's footing.