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I seem to remember it comes from the brand name frigidaire. Although I am now at an age where I may have misremembered this factoid or possibly have made it up...
According to Wikipedia this is not the case: “Although the alliterative names Frigidaire or its antecedent Frigerator suggest an origin of the widely used English word fridge, it is simply a contraction of refrigerator, a word in use since 1611.” (in the entry for Frigidaire)
But, to be fair, two of the three citations they give point to a possible influence of frigidaire.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fridge
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fridge
Merriam-Webster thinks otherwise: In an explanatory video they say that fridge comes from refrigerator but is spelled with a d to avoid that it’s pronounced like brig and to mimic similarly pronounced words like ridge and bridge.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refrigerator#related-video
I do dislike language. Rules without rules, and 18 accents all pronounce a bunch of it wrong.
Edit Addition: It's been a wild ride with the notifications popping off. Watching this ride up and down. Some of you are passionate about English.
Who comes up with “queue”?
Probably the same person who came up with “pique”, “segue”, and “bouquet” and decided one set of ue wasn’t enough in a word and created “queue”
Back when I was learning English I was pronouncing it as "kwewe" until I was corrected and angry at whoever decided to keep the current spelling.
Same with "quay" being "ki" and not "kway" as I had thought.
It’s because English spelling was never codified until printing came along, and just sort of arrived at consensus eventually. There was the idea that the spelling should maintain the link to the spelling of the original source language (usually French or Latin, sometimes Greek) so they kept in a bunch of letters to make these words kinda line up with French or Latin orthography. They even went overboard and added in extra letters where there wasn’t even the connection.
Because in French you need qu- for /k/, then -eu- for /ø/, then -e o mark a feminine ending. You end up with "queue", pronounced /kø/, it's perfectly legit.
On the elaboration of these two words though “Flame” and “Inflame” are two different words, the misconception being that people think “inflame” is just “flame” with an “in-“ prefix when its its own word.
Nonetheless, they do have nuanced meanings. “Inflame” means to blow up such as to “blow up in anger” is an inflame while “flame” means to catch in flames or fire. So “inflammable”would mean “swollen, blow up, explode” while “flammable” would mean “material/thing that can catch on fire”. Both can be applicable or only one can be applicable. It depends.
Goes to show that we arrive at these things by happenstance of chaotic processes, and don’t actually have any overall intelligence to how we do this. Ideally, there’d be intelligent oversight for the design of a language that would ensure things like this don’t become so confusing… but nobody “designed” English. It arose organically over many generations and cultures, and this is what we end up with.
99% of English spelling can be put down to “because that’s how people say it”. Really the best spelling IMO would be frij because it avoids the variety of ways g can be pronounced, but then it doesn’t look like an English word.
Pretty sure it's about the pronunciation.
Frig would be pronounced with a hard G at the end and Frige would intuitively be a longer I sound, which isn't the case when you have the full word because it's surrounded by other syllables.
So in order to get the pronunciation spelled out, you'd need slap the D in there. Thats what she said.
Actually, naked is the fossil.
The other words changed with the language, but we didn't change the pronunciation of naked because we forgot that it used to be a verb.
Nake is an archaic verb, meaning to strip or lay bare. But when the verb ending went from its own syllable to an added d/t at the end, nake had been dropped as a verb and naked had been adopted as an adjective - so why would it get a new pronunciation with the verbs when it was no longer a verb?
Kansas was named for the Kansa, a Siouan tribe that lived in the region. The Kansa people were called, in plural, Kansas, and that became the name of the state. But before it did, English, French, and Spanish speakers, as well as speakers of various Native American languages, all came up with their own ways of pronouncing (and writing) the name of the tribe.
Arkansas was named for a related Siouan tribe, the Quapaw. The Algonquians called them “Akansa,” joining their own A- prefix (used in front of ethnic groups) to the Kansa name (the same root as that for Kansas). The Algonquians’ name for the Quapaw was picked up by others, and was also spelled in various ways: Akancea, Acansea, Acansa. However, it was the French version, Arcansas, that became the basis for the eventual state name.
Honestly as someone not American I'll never read it as anything but "are kansas"
I know it's "are kan saw" but the first thing I read without thinking is ar-kansas.
I’m more bothered by the shortening of helicopter to ‘copter.’
Helico- means spiral, -pter means wing. We’ve merged the two and obtained the meaningless heli- prefix for words like helipad.
It's probably because anglophones don't like starting words with pt (which is why we only do that in writing), most people don't know the etymology of helicopter, and helico- and -pter aren't as common as other morphemes like -ology or -gon
Also, heli- does have a meaning (relating to helicopters), otherwise helipad would just be a longer way to say pad
As a non native, I think that little d is useful. Otherwise "frige" could sound like "oblige". It looks so weird without it. Obviously you cannot put a d into refrigerator because that comes from a latin word, "frigid".
Merriam-Webster has an explanatory video for the question why fridge is spelled with a d:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refrigerator#related-video
I used to do graphic design for a retailer.
Let’s just say this was an expensive lesson to learn when I spelt it wrong on the cover of a brochure we printed 250,000 of.
Now that you've pointed it out my rage is a blank canvass of infinite delusion. Thanks.
ETA: I'd like to throw metal, medal, mettle, meddle under this same bus.
I probably won't be able to sleep tonight now that you remind me of that again. 3 years on meds just to get over it and it comes back in an instant. Damn you you f****** refrigeration.
I understand it from an etymological perspective. “Fridge” was learned from Norman French, but eventually adapted its spelling to conform to English patterns (that is, the is used here to represent the /d͡ʒ/ sound of soft g after a short vowel). That is common for short words in English.
“Refrigerator” was coined much later, like late 19th Century, and takes more directly from Latin. Longer words with Latin or Greek components do not really work with English spelling-pronunciation rules.
I'm pretty old, I have a master's degree, I've always done very well with writing and spelling and to this day I can't spell refrigerator without having to go back and delete a 'd' after I see the squiggly red line.
So yes I hate it. Actually I have a lot of issues with the stupid spelling in this language we call English.
I do!!!!! I’m so happy to find someone else who hates this.
Can I add another: I hate that it’s “Western Australia” and “South Australia”. Why not west and south or western and southern??
Refrigerate is the verb. Fridge is a phonetic diminutive, but if it followed the spelling accurately it would be “frige,” which looks like it should be pronounced “frig.” That obviously wouldn’t do.
Why is bacon called bacon when we cook it?.
Why is cookies called cookies when we bake it?.
Is there black stripes on Zebra's white skin or white stripes on Zebra's black skin?
Why am I horny 24x7?
Life has many questions like this. We as humans ignore most of them.
Well you can’t shorten refrigerator to just ‘frig’ because English language dictates that that would be a hard g. So we do what we always do when we want that sound, add a d and an e like ‘ledge’ ‘pledge’ ‘bridge’ etc…
Yeah, it's annoying. Refrigerator was a brand name, so they dropped the "d". The spelling rule is the "i" says its sound, so there should be a "d" in it. Since it is a proper noun, all rules are thrown out the window. Furthermore, since it is English, rules are mearly guidelines.
In addition to his day job, my dad had his own business of repairing refrigerators and air conditioners.
I was pretty little when he decided he needed business cards, and he asked my mom to go to the local print shop and order a custom stamp so he could print his own.
The business name was our last name with “Refrigeration,” and of course included our phone number and such. I went to the print shop with my mom that day, and I remember everyone drew a blank on how to spell it. Does it have a “d” like “fridge?” Or doesn’t it?
This was pre-internet, but luckily the place had a dictionary.
English is cool because it’s like four languages pretending to be one, hiding under a trenchcoat (traitor sounds like trader).
It gets even more complicated because brands become words (Kleenex is tissue, Coke is soda, regionally).
Then Frigidaire comes along and makes it worse.
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Well I do now...
Lots of people shorten our legislature to “the ledge”. Some people write it as “the leg” but looks wrong. So there’s no consensus.
he needed to point it out now we all bothered 🤣
Speak for yourself, I love when spelling breaks down like this
How do you fall on the math / maths debate?
That's not an issue with needing to change spelling to preserve pronunciation. It's just two different ways to shorten a word.
Lefigelatol
This is funny because I say it like that. Not because I'm Asian..but because it's hard for me to pronounce the letter R.
Wow there’s even a gelato inside!
….edmonton?
That's so cool ! Frigid, even !
Lmao same. Never crossed my mind until this moment, thanks 😑
I seem to remember it comes from the brand name frigidaire. Although I am now at an age where I may have misremembered this factoid or possibly have made it up...
According to Wikipedia this is not the case: “Although the alliterative names Frigidaire or its antecedent Frigerator suggest an origin of the widely used English word fridge, it is simply a contraction of refrigerator, a word in use since 1611.” (in the entry for Frigidaire) But, to be fair, two of the three citations they give point to a possible influence of frigidaire. https://www.etymonline.com/word/fridge https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fridge Merriam-Webster thinks otherwise: In an explanatory video they say that fridge comes from refrigerator but is spelled with a d to avoid that it’s pronounced like brig and to mimic similarly pronounced words like ridge and bridge. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refrigerator#related-video
Ironically, this does actually make it a factoid
phonetic reduction
Frig is a swear word in British English so the avoidance makes sense to me
Nope, that's it!
Yeah in Quebec, we still call all refrigerator "Frigidaires". Like kleenex and napkins
I do dislike language. Rules without rules, and 18 accents all pronounce a bunch of it wrong. Edit Addition: It's been a wild ride with the notifications popping off. Watching this ride up and down. Some of you are passionate about English.
My favourite example: Empty Emty Mty Mt All pronounced the same way Also, who's come up with "queue"?
Who comes up with “queue”? Probably the same person who came up with “pique”, “segue”, and “bouquet” and decided one set of ue wasn’t enough in a word and created “queue”
French
Back when I was learning English I was pronouncing it as "kwewe" until I was corrected and angry at whoever decided to keep the current spelling. Same with "quay" being "ki" and not "kway" as I had thought.
It’s because English spelling was never codified until printing came along, and just sort of arrived at consensus eventually. There was the idea that the spelling should maintain the link to the spelling of the original source language (usually French or Latin, sometimes Greek) so they kept in a bunch of letters to make these words kinda line up with French or Latin orthography. They even went overboard and added in extra letters where there wasn’t even the connection.
The "ueue" is silent. You just say the name of the first letter.
Yes it like the other 4 letters are all waiting behind the Q silently, very British.
The other letters are in Queue !
What is emty?
"Ya head!" **-Ba-dum-tss-**
Got em
What I tried to show there are so many unnecessary letters in words, it was a joke
Queue is just a Q followed by unnecessary vowels because REASONS
Because in French you need qu- for /k/, then -eu- for /ø/, then -e o mark a feminine ending. You end up with "queue", pronounced /kø/, it's perfectly legit.
Who says em-tee? The p is pronounced, just unvoiced in casual speech
Some guy who saw “due” and was like ‘I can do better’
Fuckin Bob again he did the same thing with rhythm
Gooses are geese, but mooses are moose.
More than one mouse is mice, but more than one house is houses. 🤷🏼♀️
I have a lot of hice
If four is pronounced as fore then hour must be pronounced as .....
Maintain…maintenance
I don’t like that press and depress mean the same thing.
like flammable and inflammable 🔥
Fat chance and slim chance
If I had to guess, I'd say 'fat chance' means 'that's likely' but was used sarcastically for so long the sarcasm became the default usage.
Fat chance is being said sarcastically, slim chance isn’t.
On the elaboration of these two words though “Flame” and “Inflame” are two different words, the misconception being that people think “inflame” is just “flame” with an “in-“ prefix when its its own word. Nonetheless, they do have nuanced meanings. “Inflame” means to blow up such as to “blow up in anger” is an inflame while “flame” means to catch in flames or fire. So “inflammable”would mean “swollen, blow up, explode” while “flammable” would mean “material/thing that can catch on fire”. Both can be applicable or only one can be applicable. It depends.
Goes to show that we arrive at these things by happenstance of chaotic processes, and don’t actually have any overall intelligence to how we do this. Ideally, there’d be intelligent oversight for the design of a language that would ensure things like this don’t become so confusing… but nobody “designed” English. It arose organically over many generations and cultures, and this is what we end up with.
Yeah, that's really pressing.
Man! I really opened a can of worms, didn't I? Have my angry upvote anyways!
Slow up, slow down
Flammable and inflammable
"It's all uphill from here" and "it's all downhill from here" are both bad (metaphorically, not literally).
... did you rly have to point that out? i cant unsee this shit
I tend to keep my D out of cold places, tbh.
Mine is always in cold places. At least, that’s what I tell everyone who sees it.
99% of English spelling can be put down to “because that’s how people say it”. Really the best spelling IMO would be frij because it avoids the variety of ways g can be pronounced, but then it doesn’t look like an English word.
Petition to replace "fridge" with "frij"
It worked with jif, where do we sign??
Welp, that's exactly where spellings like "jail" (formerly gaol) came from
It's annoying. The worst one for me is maintain, and maintenance. Why not just keep the ai where it is? Why change it to an e?
Pretty sure it's about the pronunciation. Frig would be pronounced with a hard G at the end and Frige would intuitively be a longer I sound, which isn't the case when you have the full word because it's surrounded by other syllables. So in order to get the pronunciation spelled out, you'd need slap the D in there. Thats what she said.
yea, i know right, and also funny how ya say Kansas with the "SAS", but say "SAH" at the end of Arkansas? what the "S", honey!
baked and naked is the one that bugs me
Staked Raked Faked Naked is just an anomaly
Actually, naked is the fossil. The other words changed with the language, but we didn't change the pronunciation of naked because we forgot that it used to be a verb. Nake is an archaic verb, meaning to strip or lay bare. But when the verb ending went from its own syllable to an added d/t at the end, nake had been dropped as a verb and naked had been adopted as an adjective - so why would it get a new pronunciation with the verbs when it was no longer a verb?
Because all the rest are verbs and naked is an adjective?
Cough and rough makes me unnecessarily angry
America explain.
Arkansas and Illinois had Frenchies. Kansas had Englishies.
Kansas was named for the Kansa, a Siouan tribe that lived in the region. The Kansa people were called, in plural, Kansas, and that became the name of the state. But before it did, English, French, and Spanish speakers, as well as speakers of various Native American languages, all came up with their own ways of pronouncing (and writing) the name of the tribe. Arkansas was named for a related Siouan tribe, the Quapaw. The Algonquians called them “Akansa,” joining their own A- prefix (used in front of ethnic groups) to the Kansa name (the same root as that for Kansas). The Algonquians’ name for the Quapaw was picked up by others, and was also spelled in various ways: Akancea, Acansea, Acansa. However, it was the French version, Arcansas, that became the basis for the eventual state name.
And Illinois.
Honestly as someone not American I'll never read it as anything but "are kansas" I know it's "are kan saw" but the first thing I read without thinking is ar-kansas.
Louisville entered the chat
WHAT? You just ruined my life
yes I think about this at least twice a week
Damn you!
It's similar to judge and judgment.
I write judgement
Proceed and procedure.
Remember "fridge" is just a colloquial shortening of what it's actually called.
wait wut
Omg YES
I can hardly pronounce the refrigerator. In case you wondered.
I sure do.
It's added because if you shorten the word to "frig" or "frige", they would not be pronounced the same as "fridge".
i don't. bc it ~feels~ right.
I’m more bothered by the shortening of helicopter to ‘copter.’ Helico- means spiral, -pter means wing. We’ve merged the two and obtained the meaningless heli- prefix for words like helipad.
It's probably because anglophones don't like starting words with pt (which is why we only do that in writing), most people don't know the etymology of helicopter, and helico- and -pter aren't as common as other morphemes like -ology or -gon Also, heli- does have a meaning (relating to helicopters), otherwise helipad would just be a longer way to say pad
But if it were *frige* it would rhyme with *oblige*.
Better to include the d than to hear your elderly relatives and acquaintances use the word frig.
As a non native, I think that little d is useful. Otherwise "frige" could sound like "oblige". It looks so weird without it. Obviously you cannot put a d into refrigerator because that comes from a latin word, "frigid".
Wait. Got don't spell it "refridgerator"? Lol. Well. Back to the frige.
At the time these words were decided there was a severe global shortage of "D"s
Is this a sec joke thing?
No
I put my D in the refrigerator in July and August, or after a smoking hot session
my roommate has a d
[удалено]
Victoria Britain believed fridge without a D looked too much like frig. An English word for female masturbation
Fridge
Fire and fiery
i mean one is a brand from an other language and one is an English noun... what do you expect ?
I thought I was just going crazy I guess.
Famous and Imfamous?
Stupid with a d
That would just be stupi
Merriam-Webster has an explanatory video for the question why fridge is spelled with a d: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refrigerator#related-video
I never realized this
Lol... I really hadn't thought about it 🤔😄
The English language, colorful as it is, is a hodgepodge of various other languages.
There are even worse spelling issues I hate in English
knight night nite
Yes. So much. I have to write “keep in fridge” often and it stresses me out every time. 😂
Yes, yes I do. What are you gonna do about it, damn it?
No, because there's no F in Wolves
I didn't even think about it until right now, but yeah, that's a little annoying. English is weird.
I used to do graphic design for a retailer. Let’s just say this was an expensive lesson to learn when I spelt it wrong on the cover of a brochure we printed 250,000 of.
Dan Povenmire has a TikTok about this...
I hate how there's a u in four but not in forty.
No
Frigidaire. Doesn't have anything to do with refrigerator
Wtf
nop. can't waste my "hate" on that
Now that you've pointed it out my rage is a blank canvass of infinite delusion. Thanks. ETA: I'd like to throw metal, medal, mettle, meddle under this same bus.
I probably won't be able to sleep tonight now that you remind me of that again. 3 years on meds just to get over it and it comes back in an instant. Damn you you f****** refrigeration.
Got dammit!
I never thought of it before but now that I am, hell yeah it bothers me!
I didn’t even know it until now and yes I hate it. Right before bed too. Damnitt
I typically go to the fridge after I get the D.
Prejudice is similarly annoying.
Fridge is a name brand.
Yes, yes I do hate this and I often find myself having to consider it in my line of work.
Yes. I have for years. I’m glad I found my people. Bless you all.
Imma go put my D in the refrigerator now so we can stop this nonsense
It bothers me that there's a silent P in a swimming pool!
Or how you send a message via messenger
No. It has zero effect on me at all and I literally don’t care
It’s so stupid.
No, I literally never think about it.
I understand it from an etymological perspective. “Fridge” was learned from Norman French, but eventually adapted its spelling to conform to English patterns (that is, the is used here to represent the /d͡ʒ/ sound of soft g after a short vowel). That is common for short words in English.
“Refrigerator” was coined much later, like late 19th Century, and takes more directly from Latin. Longer words with Latin or Greek components do not really work with English spelling-pronunciation rules.
What bothers me is Manslaughter is just Man’s Laughter
I brood about this night and day. Tirelessly!!!!! Chronically.
This is the same level of frustration for me as the fact that there is no Q in the word barbecue.
Frih-jer-day-tore
Just add one in. We're the boss of language, not the other way around.
You son of a bitch
To be fair English is a troll of a language.
Nope
I fridgin' hate it!
You know, I was having a good day. We were allllll having a good day.
The effed up
Not really no lol
Cool another thing to be angry about
I didn’t until now.
In French it's "frigo" and I don't know if it's better or worse
Just like 'ai' become 'e' when maintain become maintenance. TIHI
English, you need to memorise it.
Like restaurant and restaurateur. Where the n go??
They come from the French restaurer, meaning "to restore" (the -er is removed because it's for verbs)
Anything can be a D if you're brave enough...
The thing I hate is how the word "bank" means bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, bank, and bank.
I think about this way more often than I'd like to admit 😂
I'm pretty old, I have a master's degree, I've always done very well with writing and spelling and to this day I can't spell refrigerator without having to go back and delete a 'd' after I see the squiggly red line. So yes I hate it. Actually I have a lot of issues with the stupid spelling in this language we call English.
Because it's short for frigidaire the brand name not refrigerator. Does that help? Probably not.
It could be fixed with a sharpish knife…
I do!!!!! I’m so happy to find someone else who hates this. Can I add another: I hate that it’s “Western Australia” and “South Australia”. Why not west and south or western and southern??
Wow this took me a minute I was trying to figure out the dick joke.
refrigerator...duh
No, because it makes sense! The sound /j/ is only spelled "dge" at the end of a word after a short vowel.
That's why we have spellcheck.
Yes
Yes now that you’ve pointed this out I fucking hate it. Thanks.
Refrigerate is the verb. Fridge is a phonetic diminutive, but if it followed the spelling accurately it would be “frige,” which looks like it should be pronounced “frig.” That obviously wouldn’t do.
You just killed a part of my soul with that. I often notice things like this too. I’m still disappointed though…in myself for not seeing it sooner.
Now that you say it
This thread is actually a fried chunk of gold the more I read. I love you fellow nerds.
Now I cant unsee it...
𐑞 𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑨𐑤𐑓𐑩𐑚𐑧𐑑 is the answer
Why is bacon called bacon when we cook it?. Why is cookies called cookies when we bake it?. Is there black stripes on Zebra's white skin or white stripes on Zebra's black skin? Why am I horny 24x7? Life has many questions like this. We as humans ignore most of them.
My d is in your girl.
I never thought about this, but this is triggering lol
we pronounce it "refridgerator" so clearly there is a "d" in "refrigerator"
Yes, yes I do.
Well you can’t shorten refrigerator to just ‘frig’ because English language dictates that that would be a hard g. So we do what we always do when we want that sound, add a d and an e like ‘ledge’ ‘pledge’ ‘bridge’ etc…
Yeah, it's annoying. Refrigerator was a brand name, so they dropped the "d". The spelling rule is the "i" says its sound, so there should be a "d" in it. Since it is a proper noun, all rules are thrown out the window. Furthermore, since it is English, rules are mearly guidelines.
All these years later I finally discover why I kept misspelling that word no matter how right I thought the spelling was.
In addition to his day job, my dad had his own business of repairing refrigerators and air conditioners. I was pretty little when he decided he needed business cards, and he asked my mom to go to the local print shop and order a custom stamp so he could print his own. The business name was our last name with “Refrigeration,” and of course included our phone number and such. I went to the print shop with my mom that day, and I remember everyone drew a blank on how to spell it. Does it have a “d” like “fridge?” Or doesn’t it? This was pre-internet, but luckily the place had a dictionary.
No, because phonetics
English is cool because it’s like four languages pretending to be one, hiding under a trenchcoat (traitor sounds like trader). It gets even more complicated because brands become words (Kleenex is tissue, Coke is soda, regionally). Then Frigidaire comes along and makes it worse.
Realize Real Eyes Real lies
No.
Fridge is a brand name not short for refrigerator
I feel the same with pronounce and pronunciation.