Bulge

How to spell bulge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bulge

What does bulge mean?

1. nounA rounded swelling or outward curve where something pushes against a surface.
2. verbTo swell or curve outward beyond the normal line of a surface.

Bulge in a sentence

• noun

  The heavy textbooks made a bulge in the side of his backpack.

• verb

  The cheap shelves began to bulge under the weight of the encyclopedias.

• noun

  A small bulge in the wall showed where the pipe ran behind the plaster.

• verb

  His pockets seemed to bulge with loose change after the trip.

Where does bulge come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes ultimately from the Latin bulga, meaning a leather bag, sack, or knapsack, a term the Romans themselves borrowed from a Gaulish (Celtic) source. It travelled into English through Old French, where bouge or boulge likewise named a swollen leather pouch. When English adopted the word in the medieval period it kept the idea of something that swells outward, and over time the everyday meaning shifted from the bag itself to the rounded swelling such a packed bag produces. The same Latin root sits behind the word 'budget', which began as a little leather pouch (bougette) for holding money, so a 'bulge' and a 'budget' are surprisingly close cousins. The simple spelling rarely traps adults, since the soft -ge ending behaves exactly as it sounds.

How the word is built

• bulge (from Latin bulga: a leather bag or sack)