Why is there a “d” in “fridge”, but not in “refrigerator” or “refrigerate”?

dr shorty, VA Girl and Nancy Kay are on the right track.

What happens is this: when you shorten “refrigerator” to the one-syllable “fridge” you move the “g” from the beginning of a syllable (re-fri-ger…) to the END of one.

In English, g is often “soft” (sounding like “j”) at the beginning of a syllable, before e, i or y (germ, “giraffe, gyrate).

But at the END of a syllable/word it doesn’t quite work that way. G all by itself at the end is always treated as “hard” –as in rig, bag…

OR when you DO find a “soft g” sound closing a word it is followed by e, AND the preceding vowel is LONG. For example: age, page, etc.

So, by English spelling conventions, “frig” would rhyme with “rig” and “frige” would rhyme with “OBLIGE”

The way English usually solves this problem — when there is a g at the end of a syllable/word after a SHORT vowel, you write in the “d” –to represent a sound which is already actually part of the ‘soft g sound’. There are many examples of this: badge, ridge, ledge, lodge, budge

(If the adding of a D seems odd, notice that j/soft g is actually not one sound, but a combination of two: d + ‘zh’; a related sound, only not using the voice is the combination t + sh, which we commonly represent with “ch”. ‘zh’, if it looks odd, is simply the “voiced” version of “sh”. It is the sound made by the Z in “azure”)

Actually, I believe the REAL problem here stems from the different ORIGINS of two sets of words. The words ending with “-dge” are generally of Old English lineage, whereas the final (-ge) are from Latin, mostly through French. So although “refrigerator” comes from a Latin word, “fridge” accomodates itself to the common pattern used for the ‘original English’ forms.

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A little overkill (sorry!)

The “rules” above seem to work pretty well when the syllable we’re considering is ACCENTED. When it loses the accent, things may seem more confusing.

Thus there are, in fact, -age words in which the “a” is not long. But neither is it an accented short vowel (as in “badge”)! Instead, the vowel has ended up in an UN-accented syllable where it is scarcely pronounced at all. Example: garbage, adage, manage, pillage. (Not surprisingly, these are largely words borrowed from Latin, mostly through French into Middle English.)

Then there is “garage”. Of course, English speakers can’t even agree on how to pronounce it! Dialects differ on the vowel sound, on which syllable to accent, and often on whether the final g is a “j” or “zh” sound . (In this case I prefer the “zh” as befits its French origin.)

It’s “one of those weird little idiosyncrasies”. Actually, in the English language, if you did NOT put the “d” in “fridge”, the “i” becomes long and you end up with a word pronounced like “frije.” In order to keep the short “i” sound of the word “refrigerator”, the “d” is placed behind the “i.”

I believe it that it’s because the word “frige” would be pronounced with a hard “g” (the beginning sound in “go”) according to English spelling rules. However “frije” wouldn’t be recognized as a shortened version of refrigerator. So adding the “d” before the “g” makes the “j” sound, but still retains the “g” spelling.

This is a total guess, but I think it’s reasonable.

It’s just one of those idiosyncrasies, I guess. I didn’t even realize it until I was having to write messages about the fridge and someone corrected my spelling. I always get confused about knowledge and other words that sneak that d in there, too.

Because ‘fridge’ isn’t really a word. It’s a slang term or abbreviation. If it were spelled frige the ‘g’ sound would be hard not soft and it would sound like fryg.

It’s easier and just sounds better to say “fridge” rather than “frige”. It’s like how poeple will often say “Daylight savings time” or “safety-deposit box” rather than their correct pronunciations. It’s just a weird thing Americans do.

Frigidaire was one of the first name brands of a refrigeator, so fridge was short for frigidaire not refrigerator!

Our weird idiosyncrasies, such as “I” before “E” except after “C”. Now look at the word WEIRD, should it not be WIERD?

If more than one goose is geese why doesn’t more than one moose become meese? ;o)

thats a good question…hmmmm….lol

i hate to sound like a *****, but who cares?