Etymology of "bodge"

[Jan Ivarsson]

Tony Thorne, Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (1990), has:
Bodge, n, vb British
(to do) a slapdash job, especially in constructing something. The term may be a back-formation from 'bodger', a rural craftsman who works out-of-doors in primitive conditions roughly shaping and turning chair-legs and spindles for example, or may be from the related standard verb, botch.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory {Greg} Downing" <gd2 at NYU.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 10:51 PM
Subject: Re: Etymology of "bodge"


> 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