I’ve seen “veegee” on this message board.
Yup, and many such words AFAICT are modernized forms of premodern words that were originally spelled without the “d”.
The unvoiced version of adding an orthographical “d” before a “j” sound, namely adding an orthographical “t” before a “ch” sound (as BigT noted), is also attested.
For instance, “satchel” from Old French “sachel”, “bitch” from Old English “bicce”, “latch” from Old English “læccan”, and many others.
^^^ What they said.
Same process as shortening microphone to “mike”. If you write “mic”, those of us who are phonetic readers hear “mick” in our heads. Or if you did something as stupid as to abbreviate “science fiction” as “syfy”, we’d all read it as “see fee” or “sigh fee”.
With refrigerator, consider the alternatives: frig would (as mentioned above) be read as frigg. frige would be read as fryje.
“Siffy”
I hate to break it to you, but I just saw a mixer with “MIC INPUT” (“mic” is the newer spelling used by audio engineers and rappers)
If the D is a problem, just refer to them as Coolerators*.
*The Coolerator predated the Frigidaire, and was renowned, or at least promoted for giving you ice cubes in 5 minutes. And Chuck Berry didn’t write a song celebrating the Frigidaire.
**Our Coolerator is crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale, as we celebrate our anniversary.
I also prefer ‘mike’ over ‘mic’, the same as how I prefer ‘bike’ over ‘bic’, but I recognize that that battle seems to be lost.
Yeah, pretty much. I still use “miked” not “micced” or whatever, but I pretty much have to write “mic” for people to know what I’m talking about.
Not sure this is adding much to what’s already been said, but:
If I may get a bit geeky, this paragraph is dubious:
(It should be noted that, as is consistent with Latin words, frigus and refrigerare were each pronounced with a hard g —that is, like the g in good . The shift to a soft- g sound—that is, pronounced like the g in gesture —in frigid and refrigerate didn’t occur until both words were established in English and at the mercy of French pronunciation influences.)
The change to palatalized G happened in Latin first, then filtered into other romance languages. That’s why palatalized G is present in Spanish, Italian, and so on. Sure, frigus would never be pronounced with a palatalized G, as U is not a palatial consonant, but refrigerare would have been in Late Latin, if not sooner.
However, this paragraph definitely does add something:
The fact is that in English, the terminal \j\ sound, as in \FRIJ, is almost universally spelled with ge . When the vowel that immediately precedes the \j\ sound is long, as in age or huge , there is no d ; when the vowel that immediately precedes the \j\ is short, a d is inserted, as in judge , bridge , lodge , etc. It is not unusual for clipped words to see new letters introduced into their spellings, as in perk for percolate or tater as a dialectical spelling of potato .
It should have occurred to me that -dge is only common when the preceding vowel is “short.” That makes it fit with the -ck stuff mentioned above. Normally the rule is to double the consonant after a short vowel, but not when doing so would imply a different pronunciation than the single consonant.
English orthography may not be regular, but it has rules. It’s just that there are often competing rules and tons of exceptions.
Which makes it like the Bible - you can find support for almost anything you want to do.
Whoa, I just had a flashback to Silf and Olly!
Hah, you, @kenobi_65 and me all thought the same thing!
As for the OP, it’s just because the spelling makes the pronunciation clear by analogy with words like “ridge” and “bridge” and “midge” and “smidge.” If I heard the word, not having one clue what it meant, I’d spell it “fridge” naturally rather than “frig” (which is another word and pronounced differently) or “frige,” which is just a bit odd as an ending and ambiguous in pronunciation. See also: “vadge” for “vagina” instead of “vag.” (Now why that didn’t happen with “veg” for “veggie,” I’m not sure.)
Well, I didn’t think the same thing as @kenobi_65.
Like @Akaj, I thought it was a question about how William Perry was responsible for elevating a top tier defense into an all time great…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “vadge” used, and if I read it out of context, I doubt I’d have any idea what it meant. “Vag”, on the other, hand, I’ve definitely seen used as a short form of “vagina”.
shrug I’m more familiar with “vadge.”
Tone is hard to convey in text conversations. In re-reading my post, I realize it might have come across as brusque and confrontational, which is definitely not what I intended. If you read it that way, I apologize.
I was trying for a humorous “me too” on the William Perry misunderstanding, but re-reading it, it might have come across as condescending.
As to “vadge”/“vag”, I’m genuinely a bit puzzled. As I wrote, I personally don’t think I’ve ever seen “vadge” before, but I have seen “vag”. I guess due to the subject matter, there may not be a truly standardized spelling for what many would see as a crude reference. shrug
A bit off-topic, but this discussion does remind me of one of the few things I remember from my college Spanish classes. On the first day of class for one of the courses, the professor wrote on the chalkboard, “FRIDGE HAWKS LONGJOHNS”, and then asked us to write down what that meant. He was making a point about how important cultural context and knowledge is in communication. If you knew that was a headline from an article in the “Chicagoland” section of the Chicago Tribune c. 1990, and if you were a Chicagoan from that era, the meaning was perfectly clear. But even for native English speaking Americans who lacked that specific cultural context, the phrase might well be incomprehensible, and for anyone learning English as a second language, it might as well have been in another language entirely.
Oh, no worries! No offense was inferred or negative tone picked up on. Now it seems maybe my post implied that for its brusqueness. Not at all!
As for “vadge” — it’s not a word I see printed with any sort of regularity, so my sample size may be small, but it is at least one valid spelling and the reason for it is similar for fridge, as it resembles other words like “badge” and its spelling can be analogized from that. But I have also seen “vag” and it may be more popular overall.
I’ve always known that “mic” was pronounced “myke,” and not “mick,” but but, up until now, I thought “vag” was pronounced with a hard (unpalatalized) G, as in /ɡ/. I’d heard the word “vadge,” but I didn’t know that “vag” was an attempt to spell that word.
I guess this is IMHO, so… chalk me up for always having seen ‘vag’ spelled exactly that way, and I’d be confused by ‘vadge’ if there weren’t sufficient context clues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular spelling before. Basically what @gdave said, I think…
FWIW fridge/frig are both legitimate spelling variations, if that is not clear. It’s just a colloquial abbreviation, after all.
The latest “bage” (no d) in the OED is from 1513–75.