Trays containing variety of fudges on display in a shop, including whisky fudge, mint fudge, and Baileys truffle
3 October 2022
Fudge has a number of meanings. It can be a verb meaning to make something fit, to “cook the books,” or to lie. It can be an interjection of contempt or disgust. And it can be a type of easy-to-make, (usually) chocolate confection. It is also a word that has a clear semantic connection back to Old English but whose modern form cannot be accounted for by any usual phonetic changes. There is a something of a mystery in its etymology.
The semantic throughline is the sense of making something fit, of cobbling something together. The earliest from is the Old English verb fegan, meaning to join, unite, fit. We see it in one of the riddles found in the Exeter Book, a collection of poems that includes some ninety-plus riddles, the exact number being a subject of debate because it’s not always clear when one riddle ends and the next begins. But the one traditionally labeled number twenty-five reads:
Ic eom wunderlicu wiht, wifum on hyhte,
neahbuendum nyt; nængum sceþþe
burgsittendra, nymþe bonan anum.
Staþol min is steapheah, stonde ic on bedde,
neoþan ruh nathwær. Neþeð hwilum
ful cyrtenu ceorles dohtor,
modwlonc meowle, þæt heo on mec gripeð,
ræseð mec on reodne, reafað min heafod,
fegeð me on fæstan. Feleþ sona
mines gemotes, seo þe mec nearwað,
wif wundenlocc. Wæt bið þæt eage.(I am a strange creature, what a woman hopes for, of use to neighbors, harmful to no city-dwellers, except the one who kills me. My shaft is straight up, I stand on a bed, underneath somewhat hairy. Sometimes a very beautiful churl’s daughter, a haughty maiden, dares so that she grasps me, rushes me to redness, ravages my head, fits me into an enclosed place. She soon feels the encounter with me, she who confines me, the woman with braided locks. One eye will be wet.)
The answer to the riddle is, of course, an onion. If you thought it was something else, shame on you.
Actually, a number of the Old English riddles contain sexual double entendres.
The verb, in the from feien, continued to be used into the Middle English period. But in the mid-sixteenth century, we see the verb to fadge, meaning to fit or to be suitable. Here is a 1566 translation of Seneca’s Octavia:
Be not dismayde, Madame, for such like paine,
The quéene of Gods was forced to sustaine,
When to eche pleasaunt shape the heauenly guyde,
And syre of Gods yturnde, from skyes dyd glyde.
The swannes white wings, to se how they could fadge
He did on him, and cuckoldes bullysh badge.
How the ending / -ɪn / became / -adʒ / is the mystery. There are no typical sound changes that could account for it, but a word with the same initial phoneme / f / and meaning the same thing arising de novo does not seem likely either.
A less mysterious sound change is the shift of the first vowel from / a / to / ʌ /, and by 1700 we get the form fudge, meaning to clumsily fit something, to cook an account, to lie. From the anonymous Remarks Upon the Navy of that year:
There was, Sir, in our Time, one Captain Fudge Commander of a Merchant-man, who upon his Return from a Voyage, how ill fraught soever his Ship was, always brought home his Owners a good Cargo of Lies, insomuch that now aboard Ship the Sailors, when they hear a great Lye told, cry out, you fudge it.
And by the middle of the eighteenth century we see fudge being used as an interjection expressing contempt or displeasure. From Oliver Goldsmith’s 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield:
But previously I should have mentioned the very impolite behavior of Mr. Burchell; who, during this discourse, sate with his face turned to the fire, and at the conclusion of every sentence would cry out Fudge, and expression which displeased us all, and in some measure damped the rising spirit of the conversation.
Of course, the interjection is a euphemism for fuck.
As for the name of the confection, that comes from the fact that fudge is a sweet that is easy to cobble together. This sense of the word arose in the United States at the close of the nineteenth century. Here is a rather condescending account from Vassar, then a women’s only school, that appeared in the Boston Journal on 24 January 1894:
“A FUDGE PARTY.”
“Fudges,” a chocolate sweetie that is a cross between a bonbon and a cakelet, are very dear to the soul of the Vassar girl. “Fudge” parties are common in that well known institution, and there is a dark suspicion that the moral sense of a “Freshie”—only a Freshie, let us hope—is blunted when the ways and means to provide materials for an impromptu “fudge” are being considered. Chocolate and sugar, the two principal ingredients, can be kept on hand, but milk and butter, which are also needed, are perishable articles and have to be provided on the instant. But a Vassar Freshman knows a thing or two, even if she has not been at college very long. And if she is suddenly attacked an hour after supper with pangs of hunger, of course she must go down to the refectory and beg for a glass of milk and a piece of bread and butter to mitigate her distress. And equally, of course, the sympathetic head of that department was never known to refuse so natural a request. Two or three hungry (?) girls are all that are needed for a sizable party, and if the bread is discarded and only the milk and butter utilized, why Vassar dormitories tell no tales, and “fudges” are too good to be lightly dispensed with.
And here is a recipe for fudge that appeared in the American Kitchen Magazine of July 1899 that shows how easy it is to make:
FUDGE.
Three cups sugar, one-fourth pound chocolate, one cup milk, two ounces butter. Vanilla. Boil ten minutes or until it makes a soft ball when tried in cold water. Then set kettle into pan of cold water and beat until creamy. Pour into pan and cut into squares when cold.WALNUT FUDGE.
Stir in a cupful of coarsely chopped walnut meats just before pouring into the pan.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, University of Toronto, 2018, s.v. fegan, v.
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield, vol. 1 of 2. Corke: Eugene Swiney, 1766, 93. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Lincoln (Mrs.). “From Day to Day.” The American Kitchen Magazine, 9.4, July 1899, 147. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO). (The metadata incorrectly lists the title of the journal as Everyday Housekeeping.)
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. feien, v.(1).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. fudge, int. and n., fudge, v., fadge, v., fay, v.1.
Remarks Upon the Navy. The Second Part. London: 1700, 1–2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“Riddle Twenty-Five.” The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. 1 of 2. Bernard J. Muir, ed. Exeter: U of Exeter Press, 1994, 303. Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501, fol. 106v–107r.
Seneca. The Ninth Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca called Octauia. London: Henry Denham, 1566, sig. C2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“The Women’s Corner.” Boston Journal (Massachusetts), 24 January 1894, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Daniela Kloth, 2018. Licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.