Author: É. Òàáîâ (213.16.62.---)
Date: 10-23-04 23:48
John Ayto. Bloomsbury Dictionary of Word Origins. Bloomsbury Publishing Limited, London, 1990.
Page 84.
Bulge [13] Ethymologically, bulge abd budget are the same word, and indeed when English first aquired bulge it was a noun, with, like budget, the sense ‘pouch’. It came from the French bouge ‘leather bag’, a descendant of Latin bulga, which may have been of Gaulish origin (medieval bolg ‘bag’ has been compared). The words present-day connotations of ‘swelling’ and ‘protruding’ presumably go back to an early association of ‘pouches’ with ‘swelling up when filled’ (compare with case of bellows and belly, which originally meant ‘bag’, and came from a source which meant ‘swell’), but curiously, apart from an isolated instance around 1400 when bulge is used for a ‘hump of smeone’s back’, there is no evidence for this meaning in English before the 17-th century. Additionally, from the 17-th to the 19-th centuries bulge was used for the ‘bottom of a ship’s hull’; it has now been superseded in this sence by bilge [15], which may well be a variant form.
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