budge adj [Cf EDD budge adj.2 “Gay, brisk, jocund”] chiefly NEng ?obs
Intimate, cozy.
1833 Daily Natl. Intelligencer (DC) 8 July [3]/1 (newspaperarchive.com) ME, Jack . . said he had warned “the Gineral,” but it made his heart ache to see the old man so budge with H. G. Otis and Tom Perkins and Bill Sullivan. 1869 Lippincott’s Mag. Lit. Sci. Educ. 3.314 sNJ, “Budge,” for “intimate”—“She and your sister are quite budge.” 1890 DN 1.18 seNH, Budge: intimate, familiar. ‘To be very budge with a person.’ Hilarity seems not to be implied. Ibid 77, Budge. . . Common in Saco, Me. Noticed from 1864 to 1868 by Professor B. I. Wheeler. 1892 DN 1.214, Budge. . . “Common in Boston in my youth.” 1921 Harper’s Mth. Mag. 142.802 NEng, There is a word used in New England in a sense that is unique. . . This is the word “budge,” as an adjective meaning “snug” or “cosy.” One of my New England friends exclaimed, as we sat before her cheerful fire on a cold night, with cider and doughnuts at hand, . . “Oh, aren’t we budge tonight!”