Re: faff (was: English notation)

Raymond Brown wrote:

> >My wife and I are fans of the show "Junkyard Wars" / "Scrapheap Challange"
> >(I think thats waht it is called over there). On the show they use the
> >word "Bodge" frequently. This word was not in my lexicon before the show.
>
> verb transitive or intransitive: to patch or mend clumsily; to put together
> unskilfully; to bungle
>
> noun: a clumsy patch
>
> It's a doublet of "botch", both being from Middle English _bocchen_ "to
> bungle"; but AFAIK the etymology of the Middle English verb is unknown.
>
> Oddly, tho IME both _botch_ and _bodge_ seem to be used with similar
> frequency, a person who patches things up in a clumsy way seems to be
> almost invariably a _bodger_.  I don't recall hearing _botcher_ used.
We have "botch" in North America, though it seems to be mostly confined to set
expressions like "a botched job" (or "a botch job").  However, over here at
least, "botch" seems to mean something different from "bodge".  If you botch
something, you fail to do it properly; a botched job is a blunder, a cock-up.
By contrast, "bodge" seems to mean something like "to put together on the fly,
to improvise a quick and dirty solution to a problem".  At least in the context
of Junkyard Wars, "bodge" does not imply a failure, whereas "botch" does.

Matt.

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