817: budget, bulge, and belly Mar 4, 2017

Some words have rather cut-and-dry explanations for their origins, especially onomatopoetic ones like 'belch'; for others, there may be more of a story. The word 'budget', for instance, comes from the 'bouge' meaning ‘leather bag’ with the same diminutive suffix that 'ballet' has. This word was Gaulish originally and through until the mid 18th century meant 'bag' or 'wallet' and the contents thereof. This then changed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e. the royal treasury) in the UK whom is said “to open the budget” when presenting an annual statement. Since, the meaning of the word was extended to finances. The relation to money, however, does not exist within other related words like 'bulge' which comes from the same root-word; its meaning is supposed to derive from the similarity between a filled bag. Moreover, the word 'belly' is distantly related, coming from the Old English 'belig' translating to ‘bag’ which itself comes from a base meaning 'to swell'.

Also, there is in fact more on 'belch' than previously stated, and you can see that here: 'belch' and 'blink'