fudge [E17th] Today we think of fudge as primarily a sweet, and maybe also as a word thrown around as an insult by politicians who are always accusing each other of ‘fudging’ facts or figures. But the first use of the word was in the sense ‘to turn out as expected’, and also ‘to merge together’. It then came to mean ‘to fit together in a clumsy or underhand manner’, or ‘to manipulate facts and figures’. People started exclaiming ‘fudge!’ to express scorn or annoyance in the 18th century. The word probably came from the old term fadge, which meant ‘to fit’. People have been enjoying the sweet since the 1890s or so, originally in America. The meaning was probably suggested by the old sense ‘to merge together’, because of the way in which you mix up the sugar, butter, and milk or cream to make the fudge.