[futharkshill]

"monkey patch" is frequently used by Rubyists without anny derogatory meaning.

[michaelcampbell]

True, but it was taken on by the ruby community as a badge of pride after being used as a slur by the aforementioned other community, IIRC.

[zdragnar]

I first heard the term in reference to how mootools messed with prototypes of JavaScript built-ins; at that time, I had no experience with either python or ruby.

Whatever context the term may have originated with, it far outgrew those origins. I definitely don't instinctively think of python programmers snubbing ruby when I hear the term.