Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To boggle; botch; patch.
  • To budge; give way: used only in the passage cited.
  • noun A botch; a patch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun dialectic A botch; a patch.
  • transitive verb Obs. or Dial. To botch; to mend clumsily; to patch.
  • intransitive verb See budge.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb UK To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair; patch up; repair, mend
  • verb To work green wood using traditional country methods; to perform the craft of a bodger.
  • noun A clumsy or inelegant job, usually a temporary repair; a patch, a repair
  • noun historical The water in which a smith would quench items heated in a forge.
  • noun South East England A four wheeled handcart used for transporting goods. Also a home made go-cart.
  • adjective slang, Northern Ireland insane or off the rails

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make a mess of, destroy or ruin

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bocchen ("to mend, patch up, repair"), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Middle Dutch botsen, butsen, boetsen ("to repair, patch") (Modern 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"). More at boot.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Unknown

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bodge.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Contranymic. In the UK, can mean to improvise, construct ad hoc.

    E.g. "we didn't have any batteries, so I bodged something together with a potato and a strip of zinc."

    And the meaning listed by Wordnet, similar to botch.

    March 28, 2009

  • The electrics have been seriously bodged and added to over the years and now they just look like a big ball of multicoloured string.
    Marie Browne, Narrow Margins (Mid-Glamorgan: Accent Press Ltd., 2009)

    November 3, 2015