fudge
/fʌdʒ
/- Following recent takeovers, it has now extended its range to include wine gums, fruit pastilles, jelly beans and traditional boiled sweets, toffees and fudge.
- By the age of 10 I was boiling up fudge, toffee and Turkish delight with, it seemed to me, only the merest hint of adult supervision.
Synonyms
- But, I gorged myself on prime rib and chocolate ice cream cake with hot fudge sauce.
- You are trying to diet and someone offers you a luscious rich slice of chocolate fudge cake.
- Things don't get better when I ask about dessert at the bar, and the barman confers with his superiors before revealing that all they've got left is hot chocolate fudge cake.
- That's why the opposition needs to start thinking now about these issues; a pre-election fudge is unlikely to pass muster.
- Their laissez-faire attitude toward corporate accounting during the go-go years may have contributed to the fudge turning to fraud.
- It's a simple matter of fairness and principle, but that would be far too much to expect of an organisation whose disciplinary committee has made a laughing stock of itself this season with various spineless fudges and cop-outs.
Synonyms
- As they did not insist on punishing the guilty, his supporters could take recourse to the ambiguities in political procedures to fudge the issue of criminal responsibility altogether.
- So why does the council leaflet apparently fudge the issue by talking of education while not letting on that the education in question is of the private variety?
- Once again it would appear that he is trying to fudge the issue.
Synonyms
- But if you don't feel comfortable with such blatant figure fudging, you can tinker with the words.
- That's why I respect him so much - he gave an honest answer, rather than trying to fudge up data to support his desires, as do many, many figures on both the left and the right.
- According to media reports, the corporation has been accused of fudging facts and figures regarding funds that were used for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
Synonyms
Origin
Early 17th century: probably an alteration of obsolete fadge 'to fit'. Early usage was as a verb in the sense 'turn out as expected', also 'merge together': this probably gave rise to its use in confectionery. In the late 17th century the verb came to mean 'fit together in a clumsy or underhand manner', which included facts or figures being cobbled together in a superficially convincing way: this led to the exclamation 'fudge!' and to noun sense 3 of the noun.
Today we think of fudge as primarily a sweet, and maybe also as a word thrown around as an insult by politicians who are always accusing each other of ‘fudging’ facts or figures. But the first use of the word was in the sense ‘to turn out as expected’, and also ‘to merge together’. It then came to mean ‘to fit together in a clumsy or underhand manner’, or ‘to manipulate facts and figures’. People started exclaiming ‘fudge!’ to express scorn or annoyance in the 18th century. The word probably came from the old term fadge, which meant ‘to fit’. People have been enjoying the sweet since the 1890s or so, originally in America. The meaning was probably suggested by the old sense ‘to merge together’, because of the way in which you mix up the sugar, butter, and milk or cream to make the fudge.