You have to be careful cooking with a crockpot. Your timing and heat level makes the difference between magnificent and glop.

Although I'd heard this word used before, I always thought it was a little weird, so I decided to check out its etymology, and here's what I found:

It was first used in 1362 by the poet William Langland.  It might have originated from combining two Latin words: 'orior' (to rise) and 'origo' (beginning, source, birth, origin).  That was picked up in the Old French words: 'origne', 'orine', and 'ourine'.  It was then found in the Middle English 'origine' and 'origyne'.  I'm not sure how Langland translated that into 'glop', but the word now refers to a thick semifluid substance (such as food) that is generally unattractive in appearance.