fudge

Probably a variant of fadge (“to fit”), the confectionery sense having evolved from the meaning of “merging together” or “turning out as expected”.

• IPA^(key): /fʌd͡ʒ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌdʒ

fudge (countable and uncountable, plural fudges)

1. (chiefly uncountable) A type of very sweet candy or confection, usually made from sugar, butter, and milk or cream.

   Have you tried the vanilla fudge? It's delicious!

   1. (US) Chocolate fudge.
2. (uncountable) Light or frothy nonsense.
3. (countable) A deliberately misleading or vague answer.
4. (uncountable, dated) A made-up story.

   Synonyms: nonsense, humbug; see also Thesaurus:nonsense

5. (countable) A less than perfect decision or solution; an attempt to fix an incorrect solution after the fact.
6. (euphemistic, slang) Fecal matter; feces.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:feces

   Here comes the fudge!

fudge (third-person singular simple present fudges, present participle fudging, simple past and past participle fudged)

1. (intransitive) To try to avoid giving a direct answer.

   Synonyms: waffle, equivocate, hedge

   When I asked them if they had been at the party, they fudged.

2. (transitive) To alter something from its true state, as to hide a flaw or uncertainty, deliberately but not necessarily dishonestly or immorally.

   The results of the experiment looked impressive, but it turned out the numbers had been fudged.

   I had to fudge the lighting to get the color to look good.

   Do you fudge your age?

3. (dated, ambitransitive) To botch or bungle something.
4. To cheat, especially in the game of marbles.

   Synonyms: cheat; see also Thesaurus:deceive

• fudge together
• fudger
• fudge wheel
• unfudged
• fudgeable

fudge

1. (colloquial, minced oath) Used in place of fuck.
   • 1866, George Eliot, Felix Holt:

     Fudge! if you had such a fine instinct, why did you let us go to Transome Court and make fools of ourselves?

   • 1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer:

     Pearl had to go home. Mike was one of the last of the good guys, so he said he'd run her on home. All Robert could say was, "Ah, fudge."

2. (colloquial, archaic) Nonsense; tommyrot.
   • 1871, George Eliot, Middlemarch:

     Oh, fudge! Don't lecture me.

• fudge on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Fudge”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.

From English fudge.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfudɡe/, [ˈfudɡe̞]
• IPA^(key): /ˈfɑdʒ/, [ˈfɑ̝dʒ]
• Rhymes: -udɡe
• Syllabification^(key): fud‧ge
• Hyphenation^(key): fud‧ge

fudge

1. fudge (type of confection)

• kinuski
• toffee

• “fudge”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2 July 2023