Meanings
- humorousuncountablecomputingA computer program's ability to sense the user's intentions rather than work according to a well-defined specification.
The big challenge of Perl 6 is to achieve a high degree of dwimmery
2007 November 11, Michele Dondi, “Why can't you slice an array @a[3..-1]?”, in comp.lang.perl.misc (Usenet)2 more examples
This dwimmery causes the model to show that polar melting rates have absolutely no connection to world climate in general, and to rising ocean levels in particular.
2005, Damian Conway, Perl Best PracticesI think that, as with various other parts of Perl 6, we can try to sweep all the dwimmery into one spot so that it can be easily recognized and/or avoided.
2005 May 6, Larry Wall, “stdio”, in perl.perl6.language (Usenet)
Origin
From DWIM + -ery, influenced by dwimmer.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
dwimmery. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dwimmery
“dwimmery.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dwimmery. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dwimmery,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dwimmery.
Source: dwimmery on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.