wedge
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /wɛd͡ʒ/
rhymes: -ɛdʒ
Forms: form: wedges
Etymology: From Middle English wegge (“wedge”), from Old English weċġ (“wedge”), from Proto-West Germanic *wagi, from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz.
Senses: examples: text: Stick a wedge under the door, will you? It keeps blowing shut.
glosses: One of the simple machines; a piece of material, such as metal or wood, thick at one edge and tapered to a thin edge at the other for insertion in a narrow crevice, used for splitting, tightening, securing, or levering.
examples: text: Can you cut me a wedge of cheese?
text: We ordered a box of baked potato wedges with our pizza.
glosses: A piece (of food, metal, wood etc.) having this shape.
examples: text: It is one of the ironies of capital cities that each acts as a symbol of its nation, and yet few are even remotely representative of it. London has always set itself apart from the rest of Britain — but political, economic and social trends are conspiring to drive that wedge deeper.
ref: 2013 September 28, Kenan Malik, “London Is Special, but Not That Special”, in New York Times, retrieved 28 Sep 2013:
glosses: Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things.
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
topics: architecture
glosses: A voussoir, one of the wedge-shaped blocks forming an arch or vault.
glosses: A flank of cavalry acting to split some portion of an opposing army, charging in an inverted V formation.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
zoology
glosses: A group of geese, swans, or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.
topics: golf
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories.
examples: text: She was wearing wedges, and I have a horrible suspicion they were her mum's wedges left over from the last century.
ref: 2010, Sue Limb, Girls, Guilty But Somehow Glorious:
glosses: One of a pair of wedge-heeled shoes.
examples: text: Open the Males, yet guard the treaſure ſure.
Lay out our golden wedges to the view,
That their reflexions may amaze the Perſeans.
ref: c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:
glosses: An ingot.
glosses: Silver or items made of silver collectively.
examples: text: He's got some decent wedge.
text: I made a big fat wedge from that job.
glosses: A quantity of money.
examples: text: I ordered a chicken parm wedge from the deli.
text: She hoped it wasn't a meatball wedge, because there's so much garlic in school meatballs that it might make my breath smell and knock the agent out of his chair.
ref: 1983, Marlene Fanta Shyer, Adorable Sunday, Scholastic:
text: Most people realize there are a lot of different names for that type of sandwich, so Scalone wondered what was so funny about wedge?
ref: 2019 October 10, Mark Lungariello, “It's called a wedge in Westchester: Not a hoagie, sub or a grinder”, in The Journal News:
glosses: A sandwich made on a long, cylindrical roll.
glosses: One of the basic elements that make up cuneiform writing, a single triangular impression made with the corner of a reed stylus.
examples: text: The wedge is used in Czech and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, haček.
ref: 1982, Thomas Pyles, John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 3rd edition, page 49:
text: The tilde and the circumflex have a place in the ASCII scheme but the wedge and the umlaut do not.
ref: 1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum, William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide, 2nd edition, page xxvi:
text: The háček or ‘wedge’ ⟨ˇ⟩ is a diacritic commonly used in Slavic orthographies. […] As a tone mark the wedge is used iconically for a falling-rising tone as in Chinese Pinyin.
ref: 1999, Florian Coulmas, “háček”, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, page 193:
topics: media
publishing
typography
glosses: Any symbol shaped like a V in some given orientation.
A háček.
examples: text: Turned V is referred to as “Wedge” by some phoneticians, but this seems inadvisable to us, because the haček accent (ˇ) is also called that in names like Wedge C for (č).
ref: 1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum, William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide, 2nd edition, page 19:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
phonetics
phonology
sciences
glosses: Any symbol shaped like a V in some given orientation.
The IPA character ʌ, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: Any symbol shaped like a V in some given orientation.
The symbol ∧, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: Any symbol shaped like a V in some given orientation.
A hairpin, an elongated horizontal V-shaped sign indicating a crescendo or decrescendo.
topics: climatology
meteorology
natural-sciences
glosses: A barometric ridge; an elongated region of high atmospheric pressure between two low-pressure areas.
topics: climatology
meteorology
natural-sciences
glosses: A wedge tornado.
topics: business
finance
glosses: A market trend characterized by a contracting range in prices coupled with an upward trend in prices (a rising wedge) or a downward trend in prices (a falling wedge).
Synonyms: sense: group of geese
word: skein
alt: phonetics: IPA character ⟨ʌ⟩
word: turned v
Derived terms: accretionary wedge
approach wedge
cross-wedge
drive a wedge
drive a wedge between
edge-of-the-wedge theorem
flying wedge
fox wedge
gap wedge
hand wedge
ice wedge
lob wedge
pitching wedge
potato wedge
salt wedge
sand wedge
shoe wedge
Sikkim wedge-billed babbler
small end of the wedge
spherical wedge
substorm current wedge
tax wedge
Texas wedge
thin edge of the wedge
thin end of the wedge
wedge-and-dash
wedge-feeder
wedge gauge
wedge gage
wedge gear
wedge issue
wedgelike
wedge of circles
wedge pea
wedge politics
wedge prism
wedge product
wedge salad
wedge-shaped
wedge shell
wedge sum
wedge-tailed eagle
wedge tomb
wedge-writing