Nudge

Nudge (pronounced nuhj)

(1) To push slightly or gently, especially with the elbow; a gentle push.

(2) To give a nudge.

(3) To annoy with persistent complaints, criticisms or pleas; to nag.

(4) In behavioral economics (and other disciplines), the use of positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence behavior.

(5) In internet use, a feature of instant messaging software used to get the attention of another user, as by shaking the conversation window or playing a sound.

(6) In gambling (slot machines; fruit machines etc), the rotation by one step of a reel of the player's choice.

(7) Slightly to move.

(8) In slang as “giving it a (bit of a) nudge”, high alcohol consumption in the context of binge drinking.

1665-1675: From the Middle English, a variant of the earlier nidge & knidge, akin to the Old English cnucian & cnocian (to knock).  In other languages, there were similar forms.  There was the Yiddish nudyen (to bore), first noted in English in 1877, apparently derived from the Polish nudzić (sometimes written as nudnik in translation (and both from Slavic words meaning "fret, ache”)) and in the 1960s modern Yiddish adapted nudge (nudjh in Modern Yiddish) to mean complainer or nagger (presumably to satisfy the demand from daughters-in-law needing descriptors of Jewish mothers-in-law).  In the Nordic region, dating from the seventeenth century there was the Icelandic nugga (to push, rub or massage) and the Norwegian nugge or nyggje (to jostle, rub, push slightly with the elbow), from the Proto-Germanic hnōjaną (to smooth, join together), from the primitive Indo-European kneh- which may have had some relationship to the Ancient Greek κνάω (knáō) (to scratch, scrape), source of the English noun acnestis (the section of an animal's skin that it cannot reach in order to scratch itself, usually the space between the shoulder blades).  There was also the Scots nodge (to push, poke, nudge), knidge (to push, squeeze), gnidge (to rub, press, squeeze, bruise) & knudge (to squeeze, press down with the knuckles) and the Middle Low German nucke, nücke & gnücke (a sudden push, shock, impetus).  Nudge is a noun & verb, nudged & nudging are verbs, nudger is a noun, nudgy is an adjective and nudgingly is an adverb; the noun plural is nudges. 

Nudge theory

The most famous example of a nudge is the etching of the image of a housefly into the urinals at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport (actually an idea dating back decades).  It’s to nudge men towards “improving the aim" and one feminist critic suggested images of dartboards so “men could keep score.”  She may have been taking the piss.

First appearing in the 2008 book Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by University of Chicago economist & Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler (b 1945) and Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein (b 1954), nudge theory was a concept now part of the behavioral sciences, political theory and economics.  It suggests the use of positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance with desirable objectives.  Nudge theory attracted criticism from both left and right because it is a form of social engineering although the specifics of the critiques vary but it certainly was organizationally influential, the seemingly radical that government could maintain the freedoms enjoyed by citizens in the democratic West while simultaneously helping them make better choices in matters relating to their health, happiness & wealth.  Within months of publication, over 500 nudge units or departments had been created around the world, including institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations (UN).  However, in recent years, critics have challenged the both the effectiveness of the idea and even that nudges by governments are inherently less intrusive and thus more likely to sustain civil freedoms than other approaches (taxes, legislation etc).  One obvious difficulty for both sides of the argument is that any attempt to find a correlation between nudges and alleged outcomes cannot easily be reduced to numbers so conventional economic modeling is often not useful.