Meaning
Used almost always in the negative: to move even the smallest distance, or to yield the smallest amount, as in 'would not budge an inch'. It covers stubborn physical immobility - a stuck safe, a jammed door - and figurative refusal to compromise, concede or change position in a dispute or a negotiation. Effectively confined to negative or interrogative contexts ('won't budge an inch', 'would he budge an inch?'); a bare positive sounds odd. In casual modern use the phrase is often shortened to plain budge with the same meaning ('the door won't budge'). Regional use: All English-speaking regions.
Origin
From The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene 1, where the drunken tinker Christopher Sly, threatened over an unpaid bill, declares: 'Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I'll answer him by law: I'll not budge an inch, boy: let him come, and kindly' - verified verbatim against shakespeare.mit.edu. Shakespeare did not invent the underlying verb: budge is a borrowing from French bouger, to move, ultimately from Vulgar Latin bullicare, to bubble or boil (Etymonline, verified via its archived entry), and the dictionaries differ on the first attestation - Merriam-Webster gives 1578, Etymonline the 1580s, and the OED's earliest evidence is from before 1592, in the writing of Robert Greene. What the play contributed was the fixed phrase: coupling the verb with an inch made it the standing expression for absolute refusal to move or yield. The idiom is elliptical - the full sense is 'not budge even an inch'.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- not budge an inch
- not move an inch
- won't budge an inch
Usage Examples
- The movers heaved at the safe until they were red in the face, but it would not budge an inch.
- He refused to budge an inch on the price, even for a cash buyer.
- We rocked the stalled car back and forth, but it did not budge an inch.