subs. (common).—A farthing.

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  ENGLISH SYNONYMS.—Fiddler; farden; gig, or grig; quartereen.

2

  1789.  G. PARKER, Life’s Painter, p. 178, s.v.

3

  1811.  GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.

4

  1848.  DUNCOMBE, Sinks of London Laid Open, s.v.

5

  Verb (old).—To suit; to fit; to agree with; to come off. [A.S., fégan, fégean, to join, to fit. Nares says, ‘probably never better than a low word: it is now confined to the streets.’]

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  1593.  NASHE, Four Letters Confuted, in wks. (GROSART) II., 215. They haue broght in a new kind of a quicke fight, which your decrepite slow-mouing capacitie cannot FADGE with.

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  1594.  SHAKESPEARE, Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 1. 154. We will haue, if this FADGE not, an Antique.

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  1599.  MASSINGER, The Old Law, IV., ii. Clean. My Lord! Sim. Now it begins to FADGE.

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  1636.  HEYWOOD, Love’s Mistress, Act IV. Vulcan. … I keep a dozen journeymen at least, besides my Ciclops and my Prentises, yet ’twill not FADGE.

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  1639.  BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, Wit without Money, III., iv. Clothes I must get; this fashion will not FADGE with me.

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  1678.  Quack’s Academy, in Harleian Miscellany (ed. PARK), II., 32. That could never make their untoward handicrafts FADGE to purpose.

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  1750.  WALPOLE, Letter to Sir Horace Mann, 18 Oct. (1833), vol. II., p. 485. Alack! when I came to range them, they did not FADGE at all.

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  1819.  SCOTT, in C. K. Sharpe’s Correspondence (1888), ii., 197. Pray let me know … how matters FADGE in the great city of Edinburgh.

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  1830.  SCOTT, The Doom of Devorgoil, Act II., Sc. 1.

        If this same gear FADGE right, I’ll cote and mouth her,
And then! whoop! dead! dead! dead!

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  1851.  BORROW, Lavengro, ch. lv., p. 173 (1888). Any new adventure which can invent will not FADGE well with the old tale.

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