fadge

• Rhymes: -ædʒ

Unknown. According to Chambers, from Old English fegan (“to join or fit together”); Liberman suggests a Middle English variant of fagot (“bundle of sticks”).

fadge (third-person singular simple present fadges, present participle fadging, simple past and past participle fadged)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be suitable (with or to something).
   • Wycherley

     Well, Sir, how fadges the new design?

2. (obsolete, intransitive) To agree, to get along (with).
   • Milton

     They shall be made, spite of antipathy, to fadge together.

3. (obsolete, intransitive) To get on well; to cope, to thrive.
   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     I can never fadge well: for I am at such a stay, that except for health and life, there is nothing I will take the paines to fret my selfe about, or will purchase at so high a rate as to trouble my wits for it, or be constrained thereunto.

4. (Geordie) To eat together.
5. (Yorkshire, of a horse) To move with a gait between a jog and a trot.

Etymology uncertain, but potentially from or related to Old English faċġ (“flat-fish, plaice, flounder”).

fadge (plural fadges)

1. (Ireland) Irish potato bread; a flat farl, griddle-baked, often served fried.
2. (New Zealand) A wool pack, traditionally made of jute, now often synthetic.
3. (Geordie) A small loaf or bun made with left-over dough.
4. (Yorkshire) A gait of horses between a jog and a trot.

• fadge in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• The New Geordie Dictionary, Frank Graham, 1987, →ISBN
• A Dictionary of North East Dialect, Bill Griffiths, 2005, Northumbria University Press, →ISBN
• Todd's Geordie Words and Phrases, George Todd, Newcastle, 1977
• Newcastle 1970s, Scott Dobson and Dick Irwin,
• Northumberland Words, English Dialect Society, R. Oliver Heslop, 1893–4
• Chambers, William (1893): Chambers's English Dictionary, Pronouncing, Explanatory, and Etymological, with Vocabularies of Scottish Words and Phrases, Americanisms
• Liberman, Anatoly: An Analytic Dictionary of the English Etymology: An Introduction