It was that, but “fridge” has entered the lexicon as the standard spelling. You will find the definition in dictionaries as “fridge – short for refrigerator.” ON the other hand, “frig” only returns references to “vulgar slang,” as a replacement for “fuck,” where it is pronounced with the hard G.
This aligns with my perceptions. I’ve never seen fridge spelled “frig”. I’m sure that was used at one point, but it seems English standardized on “fridge.” It will be interesting if we eventually standardize on “vag.” I would have thought we’d at lest spell it “vaj”.
Apparently it’s actually slang for 2 very different sex acts if dictionary.com is to be believed. Of the two, the one I was familiar with ironically doesn’t involve getting the D…
And while we’re here, let’s have a little discussion of the word for a temporary quick-and-dirty fix: Is it a “kluge” or a “kludge”?
I see “kludge” often, and that grates. I think the correct pronunciation is like “klooj” (with oo as in school), and “kludge” just doesn’t say that. Kludge looks like it should rhyme with budge, fudge, nudge, sludge, trudge. Lose that d, people. It’s kluge.
I’ve only ever seen kludge, and I’ve always heard it pronounced to rhyme with judge. (It is not just a word I read but never heard.) If you said klooge (which is how I’d spell what you describe, as it rhymes with scrooge), I likely wouldn’t know what you were talking about.
We must be living on different continents. I, OTOH, have NEVER heard it pronounced to rhyme with “judge”, but always to rhyme with “stooge”. Maybe there’s a different tradition between, say, the electronics industry (where, I think, the word originated) versus the software industry (where I spent much of my career)?
I’ve seen it spelled “klooge” and even “klooj”, but most often “kluge”. I’ve also seen “kludge” often, but this just doesn’t agree with the pronunciation I’ve always heard.
ETA: Okay, on thinking again, I guess I’ve seen the spellings “kluge”, “klooge”, and “kludge” about equally often, but always pronounced to rhyme with stooge.
I’m with @BigT. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it spelled any other way than “kludge” or heard it pronounced any other way than to rhyme with budge/fudge/judge.
FWIW, I’m a U.S. American, with no ties to the electronics or software industries.
I generally hear it to rhyme with “judge” as well, though I have heard “kloodge.” Wiktionary gives both pronunciations, with the “judge”-rhyming one first:
Forvo.com gives three audio examples. Two are British, one is American. The first British one says “Kloodge”. The second British one cuts of as “kluh” without the final consonant. And the American one is an over-enunciated, but clear “kludge”:
None of these three words, “oblige”, “prestige”, “vestige”, are pronounced similar to one another as far as I’ve known these words. The “i” is different in all three words. The “g” is pronounced like English “j” (dge sound) in two of these words and like “zh” (French “j”) in one of them.
I checked all three words with on-line dictionaries.
BTW, I haven’t seen this mentioned yet: I think this is why some words (often foreign names) are spelled beginning with “Dj”, as in Djibouti. I think this is used in French spellings to indicate the English-sounding “j”, since the French “j” by itself (Jibouti?) is very different.
If I saw “frige” I would most likely say it “frigga” (like the Anglicized Frigg, Odin’s wife), because I would not recognize it as an English word and that would be my best guess at it.
While we’re at it, what’s up with the digraph “zh”? I’m fairly sure everybody agrees how it’s pronounced (like the French “j”), and the sound does occur in English words like “treasure” and “pleasure” and “casual”. And the “zh” spelling occurs in the English spelling of some foreign words, especially Russian words and names.
But I’m not aware of any English words having this sound and being spelled with “zh”? Are there any? Is it always spelled with “su” or “ge” (like massage) in English words?
Well, here’s all the acceptable Scrabble words with zh: Words with ZH
Basically, the answer is that there really aren’t any. “Zhoosh” is probably the closest to an actual English word, albeit informal. “Muzhik” is transliteration from Russian. “Nudzh” is Yiddish. “Zho” is apparently an alternate spelling of “dzo” a yak-cow hybrid.