bodge
verbEtymology
Inherited from Middle English bocchen (“to mend, patch up, repair”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Middle Dutch botsen, butsen, boetsen (“to repair, patch”) (Dutch botsen (“to strike, beat, knock together”)), related to Old High German bōzan (“to beat”), See beat; or perhaps from Old English bōtettan (“to improve, repair”), Old English bōtian (“to get better”). Compare botch. More at boot. Perhaps from boggle. Perhaps from botch (“patch, or a measurement of capacity equivalent to half a peck”). There is a hypothesis that bodges, defined as rough sacks of corn, closely resembled packages of finished goods the bodgers carried when they left the forest or workshop. Another hypothesis (dating from 1879) is that bodger was a corruption of badger, as similarly to the behaviour of a badger, the bodger dwelt in the woods and seldom emerged until evenings. Other hypotheses include German Böttcher (“cooper (profession)”), a trade that uses similar tools), and similar Scandinavian words, such the Danish bødker. These words have similar origins to butt, as in water butt (“rain barrel”). Or possibly it may have been a derogatory term used by workers in furniture factories, referring to the men who worked in the woods that produced the “incomplete” chair parts. The factory workers would then take the output of that "bodged job" and turn it into a finished product. The Oxford English Dictionary Supplement of 1972 has two definitions for bodger. One is a local dialect word from Buckinghamshire, for a chair leg turner. The other is Australian slang for bad workmanship. The etymology of the bodger and botcher (poor workmanship) are well recorded from Shakespeare onwards, and now the two terms are synonymous.
Definitions
To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair
To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair; mend, patch up, repair.
- We bodged again; as I have seen a swan
- All the actions of his life are like so many things bodged in without any natural cadence or connexion at all.
- Some cars were neglected, others bodged to keep them running with inevitable consequences
To work green wood using traditional country methods
To work green wood using traditional country methods; to perform the craft of a bodger.
- His father, grandfather and countless generations before him had obtained a living from chair bodging in the solitude of the beech glades.
- Which is no different than my chair bodging, in that I can go out into the woodland and do my work without having to be tied in to a village shop situation.
A clumsy or inelegant job, usually a temporary repair
A clumsy or inelegant job, usually a temporary repair; a patch, a repair.
- The simple tool above provides a low-tech bodge to help people locate missing friends and family in Christchurch following today's terrible earthquake.
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The water in which a smith would quench items heated in a forge.
A four-wheeled handcart used for transporting goods. Also, a homemade go-cart.
Insane, off the rails.
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for bodge. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA