Etymology of "bodge"

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 04:43 PM 2/9/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Does anyone here know the origins of the British slang "bodge?" My son
>and I have been watching the Brit import "Junkyard Wars" on TLC and the
>term is freely used (and creatively applied). From the context, it
>obviously means to cobble together, but I was not familiar with the term
>beforehand.
>
>They've also used "bodger" and "artful bodger" (as in one who bodges),
>"bodgy," "bodge-tastic," "bodgerrific," and similar wacky coinages.

OED2 still has:

bodge, v. Obs. or dial.
[An altered form of botch v.; cf. grudge from grutch.]

Might "dodge" = `improvised trick' be a model here as well?

Does the EDD say anything more/different?

Note that all the cites given by OED2 are from the 16th cent., with the
exception of some 19th-cent. UK county dialect glossaries and one newspaper
usage from the 1880s. Time to update that entry, I suppose.


Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at nyu.edu