Bulge [13] Etymologically, bulge
and budget are the same word, and indeed when English first acquired
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 someone’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bulge was used for the ‘bottom of a ship’s hull’; it has now been superseded in this sense by bilge [15], which may well be a variant form.