flannel vs fudge the issue

flannel

adj
  • Made of flannel. 

verb
  • To flatter; to suck up to. 

  • To wrap in flannel. 

  • To waffle or prevaricate. 

  • To rub with a flannel. 

noun
  • A washcloth. 

  • Soothing, plausible untruth or half-truth; claptrap. 

  • A soft cloth material originally woven from wool, today often combined with cotton or synthetic fibers. 

  • A flannel shirt. 

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 flannel and fudge the issue occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )