‘A bodged object might not look quite the way it would if it had been professionally repaired.’

Improvising a repair? Rhiannon Grant has a word

by Rhiannon Grant 28th February 2020

Here’s a word I remembered recently: bodge.

Bodging can be a problem, an approach, or a skill. The English word ‘to bodge’ has, as far as I’m aware, three uses. It can be used as: a short form of chair-bodgering (the skill of making chair legs and other items from green wood); to indicate a repair which has been done badly (as in ‘a bodged job’); and to suggest something in between, something that uses the skill of improvisation to create a functional, but often inelegant, solution.