fence vs fudge the issue

fence

noun
  • A memory barrier. 

  • Skill in oral debate. 

  • Someone who hides or buys and sells stolen goods, a criminal middleman for transactions of stolen goods. 

  • A thin artificial barrier that separates two pieces of land or forms a perimeter enclosing the lands of a house, building, etc. 

  • A guard or guide on machinery. 

  • The place whence such a middleman operates. 

  • A barrier, for example an emotional barrier. 

verb
  • To enclose, contain or separate by building fence. 

  • To engage in the sport of fencing. 

  • To engage in the selling or buying of stolen goods. 

  • To jump over a fence. 

  • To conceal the truth by giving equivocal answers; to hedge; to be evasive. 

  • To defend or guard. 

fudge the issue

verb
  • Adopt a solution to a specific problem which does not address the larger, more general problem of which the specific problem is an instance. 

How often have the words fence and fudge the issue occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )