budge

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See also: Budge

English[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (UK) IPA(key): /bʌd͡ʒ/
    • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ʌdʒ

Etymology 1[edit]

Borrowed from Middle French bouger, from Old French bougier, from Vulgar Latin *bullicāre (“to bubble; seethe; move; stir”), from Latin bullīre (“to boil; seethe; roil”). More at boil.

Alternative forms[edit]

Verb[edit]

budge (third-person singular simple present budges, present participle budging, simple past and past participle budged)

  1. (intransitive) To move; to be shifted from a fixed position.
    I’ve been pushing this rock as hard as I can, but it won’t budge an inch.
  2. (transitive) To move; to shift from a fixed position.
    I’ve been pushing this rock as hard as I can, but I can’t budge it.
  3. To yield in one’s opinions or beliefs.
    The Minister for Finance refused to budge on the new economic rules.
    • 1933, Richard Curle, Corruption, page 75:
      If only I could get Ambrose to take me away somewhere! But he won't budge.
  4. (Upper Midwestern US, Indiana, western Canada) To cut or butt (in line); to join the front or middle rather than the back of a queue.
    Hey, no budging! Don't budge in line!
  5. To try to improve the spot of a decision on a sports field.
    (Can we add an example for this sense?)
Usage notes[edit]

Senses 1-3 are most often used in negative constructions (won't budge; refused to budge), and when used positively, it is a telic verb, so one can say He finally budged but not He budged all day until he'd finally had enough. Positive constructions such as Sure, I'll budge or Will he budge? are attested but uncommon. See also budge up.

Synonyms[edit]
Derived terms[edit]
Translations[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

From Middle English bouge, bougie, bugee, from Anglo-Norman bogé, from Anglo-Latin *bogea, bulgia, related to Latin bulga (“a leathern bag or knapsack”). Doublet of bulge.

Noun[edit]

budge (uncountable)

  1. A kind of fur prepared from lambskin dressed with the wool on, formerly used as an edging and ornament, especially on scholastic habits.
    • 1649, John Milton, Observations:
      They are become so liberal, as to part freely with their own budge-gowns from off their backs.
    • 1787, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, page 282:
      One hundred pieces of green silk for the Knights; fourteen budge furs for surcoats; thirteen hoods of budge for clerks, and seventy furs of lamb for liveries in summer.

Adjective[edit]

budge (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) austere or stiff, like scholastics
    • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:
      Those budge doctors of the stoic fur.
    • 1784, John Wesley, The Magazine of the Wesleyan Methodist Church - Volume 7, page 393:
      The solemn fop; significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge, He says but little and that little said, 'Owes all its weight, like loaded dice, to lead.
    • 1931, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, page 684:
      "My boy looked at me very budge," i.e., solemn.
Derived terms[edit]

Etymology 3[edit]

Perhaps related to booze.

Noun[edit]

budge (uncountable)

  1. (slang, obsolete) Alcoholic drink.
Derived terms[edit]
References[edit]
  • John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “budge”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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