Theming "Budge"

Plus a weird dictionary and a couple of corrections...

What can be done with the word “budge”?

Anagrams: “Budge” has one simple anagram, “debug.” Also “be dug,” as a hole might.

Meanings: “Budge” has two “move slightly” meanings, transitive and intransitive: you can budge a rock by pushing it or the rock could budge because you pushed it. You can also budge from a more metaphorical position, if you admit you lost an argument about it. (But who does that?) In some parts of the US and Canada, budge means to cut in line. Budge also means woolen lambskin, and it used to mean booze and austere, two meanings which might’ve canceled each other out.

There was also a tennis champion named Don Budge in the late 1930s. He was the first ever to win all four Grand Slam events.

Synonyms: The most modern is scooch. This is probably the funniest direct synonym too. Stir is shortest. Shift about is the least common.

Charades: You can cut “budge” into “Bud GE,” a great name if General Electric wants to create a sub-brand to promote eco-friendly products. I don’t know why I’m just giving this advice away here, consultants could charge six figures for this.

Rhymes: An apt rhyme is nudge. According to OneLook, the most common rhyme is judge, followed by grudge, then nudge.

Add-a-Letter: Adding an i gives you budgie, a cute little parrot that’s easy to budge. Adding a t gives budget. The best cryptic crossword clue for BUDGE is “Yield from funds reduced”—Yield meaning budge, funds meaning budget which then gets “reduced” into budge.

Kangaroo Words: Budge is hiding inside a lot of other terms, either all in one piece (as in fussbudget, rosebud geranium, and budgerigar, the longer form of budgie) or split up (as in sick building syndrome, Bermuda Triangle, Blue Ridge, and bludgeon).

Word Art: Its meaning of slight motion means that “budge” would be ideal for a short, simple animation.

More Not Than Often: Budge almost never appears in a positive sense. The sentence He doesn’t budge is far more common than the sentence He budges. Such “usually-not” words are related to “lonely negatives,” words with negative prefixes like disheveled and misgivings that see common use in English while heveled and givings do not.

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In Word Ways #5.1 (1972), A. Ross Eckler had this to say:

Among word buffs, 1971 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year that the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, making this monumental work available at one-third the price and one-sixth the bulk of the original. An exceedingly useful lexicographic tool has been placed in the hands of many who formerly had to make a trip to the library to consult it. By contrast, one of the least-heralded publishing events of 1971 was the appearance of Jack Levine’s A List of Pattern Words of Lengths Two Through Nine. Nevertheless, I predict that the Levine dictionary may have a greater impact than the COED on word buffs.

Levine’s work was simple: he gathered together all the English words that fit each letter-pattern, presenting them in pattern order. The pattern abccdeef, for instance, would match the words BALLROOM and GARROTTE.

Today, decoding sites like Rumkin and Quipqiup are better resources than a printed dictionary, but Levine’s work was a useful resource for a number of years. It went out of print before Amazon was young, though, so good luck finding a copy today!

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A couple of notes on last week’s pieces. When I discussed higher-dimensional word “forms,” I mentioned the work of Darryl Francis and Delphi Knoxjaqzonville. Darryl emailed me to confess something Dmitri Borgman had once speculated: Delphi was just a pen name he’d written under. (The biggest clue is that “Delta Phi” corresponds to “D.F.”—the pileup of uncommon letters in the last name is just for fun.)

“Bill$Dollar,” in response to my Arthur Wynne piece, did a little research on Family Tree Now concerning Kay W. Cutler, Arthur Wynne’s last living descendant. Bill found no death notice on Kay’s direct listing but did find such a notice on the listing of her half-sister, so it’s likely Kay is no longer with us.

Tomorrow: What is a plutogram?