The bodge

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Wansworth

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Recent use of the word bodge has thrown a bad light on the veritable act of Bodging.Here in Spain its known as a "chapuza" and is a recognised means of fixing something so it continues to function and is normally executed by a non professional to save money or avoid worse happenings.
 
the ideal

the ideal is to sail a boat maintained by a details man

but you want to leave the details man ashore and have a bodger as first mate to fix stuff that breaks using skill, creativity and whatever is at hand

but a boat maintained by a bodger is not a good thing
to sail in


and the reason I know this.....

Dylan
 
To me, a bodged job is one that's been messed up, irrespective of whether it was carried out by a professional or amateur.
 
Bodging is an honourable and skilled profession. Part of the English furniture making industry centred on High Wycombe, bodgers cut and shaped green beech into spindles and stretchers for chair making. They turned the wood in the forest where they cut it, using pole lathes made from cord and a living sapling.

My suspicion is that the word we should be using in this context is not a bodger, but a botcher.
 
Twister_Ken said:
Bodging is an honourable and skilled profession. Part of the English furniture making industry centred on High Wycombe, bodgers cut and shaped green beech into spindles and stretchers for chair making. They turned the wood in the forest where they cut it, using pole lathes made from cord and a living sapling.

My suspicion is that the word we should be using in this context is not a bodger, but a botcher.
Click to expand...

I think your right..I can hear my late father saying "thats a right botch"
 
But this Chapuza bloke doesn't sound like a Botcher.

Yer Botcher thinks it's fixed, yer Chapuza knows it's working for now but keeps an eye on it and knows that he is going to have to do something more permanent eventually. How well the "temporary repair" performs will determine the timescale of the proper fix.
 
Bodging and botching - very different

Twister_Ken said:
Bodging is an honourable and skilled profession. Part of the English furniture making industry centred on High Wycombe, bodgers cut and shaped green beech into spindles and stretchers for chair making. They turned the wood in the forest where they cut it, using pole lathes made from cord and a living sapling.

My suspicion is that the word we should be using in this context is not a bodger, but a botcher.
Click to expand...

bodging and botching are two very different things

a bodger is capable of doing running repairs at a cheap price

a botcher is capable of spending lots of money and still doing it wrong - professionals often do botched jobs - they seldom do bodged jobs

I agree about the furniture maker - but the meaning of words drift around - nailing down their meaning is like the proverbial wall and jelly challenge

try sophisticated for instance

its meaning has changed completely over the course of a hundred years

Dylan
 
aquaplane said:
But this Chapuza bloke doesn't sound like a Botcher.

Yer Botcher thinks it's fixed, yer Chapuza knows it's working for now but keeps an eye on it and knows that he is going to have to do something more permanent eventually. How well the "temporary repair" performs will determine the timescale of the proper fix.
Click to expand...

Well its a possibility......Its only in recent times the Spaniard has been encouraged to do anything like DIY they still have programmes on the telly showing how to do stuff like Barry Bucknell used to do.The chapuza is basically somebody having a go at fixing something basically because ther was no money to pay an expert....my father in laws tool collection is a small hammer a few slightly bent screw drivers and a blunt chisel.
 
Bit like mine then

mogy said:
Well its a possibility......Its only in recent times the Spaniard has been encouraged to do anything like DIY they still have programmes on the telly showing how to do stuff like Barry Bucknell used to do.The chapuza is basically somebody having a go at fixing something basically because ther was no money to pay an expert....my father in laws tool collection is a small hammer a few slightly bent screw drivers and a blunt chisel.
Click to expand...

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=284174
 
dylanwinter said:
...but the meaning of words drift around - nailing down their meaning is like the proverbial wall and jelly challenge
Click to expand...
Words have always drifted around - or subtly evolved - which is one of the wonders of language, especially English, but in contemporary times we have the additional problem of marketing and advertising 'creatives' hijacking the real meaning of words.

EG 'craftsman' used to mean 'This thing was made by a properly trained and highly experienced craftsman employing finely honed traditional tools, using manual techniques that have evolved over hundreds of years, working to the highest possible standards of care and perfection, all underpinned by an attitude that if a thing is worth doing at all, then it is worth doing well.'

Nowadays, 'craftsman' means 'Buy this now, you muthafukka, because - although we just hoiked a GCSE failee off the street to press a button on a machine - we have another machine that puts a detail on the finished product to make it look like a craftsman made it.'

dylanwinter said:
try sophisticated for instance
its meaning has changed completely over the course of a hundred years.
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Are you being sophisticated?
 
I am having a bodge week on board all next week. If you wish to rate my bodges, please fell free to step aboard.
 
dylanwinter said:
try sophisticated for instance

its meaning has changed completely over the course of a hundred years

Dylan
Click to expand...

Not sure about that - it's meaning has certainly changed since middle English, when it meant 'tampered with'. Nowadays it's a multi-meaning word. Applied, for example, to people, arguments, machinery, fashion or movies its meaning shifts each time. Also perceptions of its meaning differ. For some 'sophisticated' is good. For others it means over-complicated - not good. You might prefer to marry a sophisticated partner, but sleep with an unsophisticated one, for example. And where do you draw the line between sophisticated and over-sophisticated?

Is it you or me (or both) that is employing sophistry here?

(but a bodger is still a man turning green timber in the woods!)
 
For you

Twister_Ken said:
Not sure about that - it's meaning has certainly changed since middle English, when it meant 'tampered with'. Nowadays it's a multi-meaning word. Applied, for example, to people, arguments, machinery, fashion or movies its meaning shifts each time. Also perceptions of its meaning differ. For some 'sophisticated' is good. For others it means over-complicated - not good. You might prefer to marry a sophisticated partner, but sleep with an unsophisticated one, for example. And where do you draw the line between sophisticated and over-sophisticated?

Is it you or me (or both) that is employing sophistry here?

(but a bodger is still a man turning green timber in the woods!)
Click to expand...

For you, perhaps, a bodger is a man who makes furniture from trees

but for most people its a bloke who cobbles stuff together

to stick religously to your own outdated meaning of a word is potentially dangerous

take the word gay....

when most of us were learning this wonderful language it meant happy, bright and sociable

then it changed and was applied to proclivities

now to our children or grandchildren it has a new meaning entirely

To stick to the old meanings makes you just one fragile step from the standing on the side of the road shouting at the traffic or ranting about mobos and jetskis....... aaaagh!

Dylan
 
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aquaplane said:
But this Chapuza bloke doesn't sound like a Botcher.

Yer Botcher thinks it's fixed, yer Chapuza knows it's working for now but keeps an eye on it and knows that he is going to have to do something more permanent eventually. How well the "temporary repair" performs will determine the timescale of the proper fix.
Click to expand...

Assuming that Botcher and Bodger have the same definition in this instance, I would not be so critical of the Botcher. Many a bodge has been completed with the curtain call "right that should do it, its a bit of a bodge, but it will work .... for now!"
 
Babylon said:
Words have always drifted around - or subtly evolved - which is one of the wonders of language, especially English, but in contemporary times we have the additional problem of marketing and advertising 'creatives' hijacking the real meaning of words.

EG 'craftsman' used to mean 'This thing was made by a properly trained and highly experienced craftsman employing finely honed traditional tools, using manual techniques that have evolved over hundreds of years, working to the highest possible standards of care and perfection, all underpinned by an attitude that if a thing is worth doing at all, then it is worth doing well.'

Nowadays, 'craftsman' means 'Buy this now, you muthafukka, because - although we just hoiked a GCSE failee off the street to press a button on a machine - we have another machine that puts a detail on the finished product to make it look like a craftsman made it.'


Are you being sophisticated?
Click to expand...

Methinks a trifle cynical?
 
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