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Webster 1913 Edition

Wedge

Wedge

(wĕj)
,
Noun.
[OE.
wegge
, AS.
wecg
; akin to D.
wig
,
wigge
, OHG.
wecki
, G.
weck
a (wedge-shaped) loaf, Icel.
veggr
, Dan.
vægge
, Sw.
vigg
, and probably to Lith.
vagis
a peg. Cf.
Wigg
.]
1.
A piece of metal, or other hard material, thick at one end, and tapering to a thin edge at the other, used in splitting wood, rocks, etc., in raising heavy bodies, and the like. It is one of the six elementary machines called the mechanical powers. See Illust. of
Mechanical powers
, under
Mechanical
.
2.
(Geom.)
A solid of five sides, having a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
3.
A mass of metal, especially when of a wedgelike form.
“Wedges of gold.”
Shak.
4.
Anything in the form of a wedge, as a body of troops drawn up in such a form.
In warlike muster they appear,
In rhombs, and
wedges
, and half-moons, and wings.
Milton.
5.
The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos; – so called after a person (Wedgewood) who occupied this position on the first list of 1828.
[Cant, Cambridge Univ., Eng.]
C. A. Bristed.
Fox wedge
.
(Mach. & Carpentry)
See under
Fox
.
–
Spherical wedge
(Geom.)
,
the portion of a sphere included between two planes which intersect in a diameter.

Wedge

,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Wedged
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Wedging
.]
1.
To cleave or separate with a wedge or wedges, or as with a wedge; to rive.
“My heart, as wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain.”
Shak.
2.
To force or drive as a wedge is driven.
Among the crowd in the abbey where a finger
Could not be
wedged
in more.
Shakespeare
He ’s just the sort of man to
wedge
himself into a snug berth.
Mrs. J. H. Ewing.
3.
To force by crowding and pushing as a wedge does;
as, to
wedge
one's way
.
Milton.
4.
To press closely; to fix, or make fast, in the manner of a wedge that is driven into something.
Wedged
in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast.
Dryden.
5.
To fasten with a wedge, or with wedges;
as, to
wedge
a scythe on the snath; to
wedge
a rail or a piece of timber in its place
.
6.
(Pottery)
To cut, as clay, into wedgelike masses, and work by dashing together, in order to expel air bubbles, etc.
Tomlinson.

Webster 1828 Edition

Wedge

WEDGE

,
Noun.
[This word signifies a mass, a lump.]
1.
A mass of metal; as a wedge of gold or silver. Joshua 7.
2.
A piece of metal, particularly iron, thick at one end and sloping to a thin edge at the other, used in splitting wood, rocks, &c. This is one of the five mechanical powers. A like piece of wood is by some persons called a wedge, or a glut.
3.
Something in the form of a wedge. Sometimes bodies of troops are drawn up in the form of a wedge.

WEDGE

,
Verb.
T.
1.
To cleave with a wedge; to rive. [Little used.]
2.
To drive as a wedge is drive; to crowd or compress closely. We were wedged in by the crowd.
3.
To force, as a wedge forces its way; as, to wedge ones way.
4.
To fasten with a wedge or with wedges; as, to wedge on a sythe; to wedge in a rail or a piece of timber.
5.
To fix in the manner of a wedge.
Wedgd in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast.

Definition 2024

wedge

wedge

English

Noun

wedge ‎(plural wedges)

A wedge
Wedge in geometry.
  1. 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.
    Stick a wedge under the door, will you? It keeps blowing shut.
  2. A piece (of food, etc.) having this shape.
    Can you cut me a wedge of cheese?
    We ordered a box of baked potato wedges with our pizza.
  3. (geometry) A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
  4. (figuratively) Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things.
    • 2013 September 28, Kenan Malik, "London Is Special, but Not That Special," New York Times (retrieved 28 September 2013):
      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.
  5. (archaic) A flank of cavalry acting to split some portion of an opposing army, charging in an inverted V formation.
  6. (golf) A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories.
  7. A group of geese, swans or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.
  8. One of a pair of wedge-heeled shoes.
    • 2010, Sue Limb, Girls, Guilty But Somehow Glorious
      She was wearing wedges, and I have a horrible suspicion they were her mum's wedges left over from the last century.
  9. (colloquial, Britain) A quantity of money.
    I made a big fat wedge from that job.
  10. (typography, US) háček
    • 1982, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language (3rd ed.), page 49
      The wedge is used in Czech and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, haček.
    • 1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page xxvi
      The tilde and the circumflex have a place in the ASCII scheme but the wedge and the umlaut do not.
    • 1999, Florian Coulmas, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, page 193, “háček”
      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.
  11. (phonetics) The IPA character <ʌ>, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel.
    • 1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page 19
      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).
  12. (mathematics) The symbol ∧, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.
  13. (meteorology) a wedge tornado
Derived terms
  • wedge gauge, wedge gage
  • wedge gear
Synonyms
  • (group of geese): skein
  • (phonetics: IPA character <ʌ>): turned v
Translations

Verb

wedge ‎(third-person singular simple present wedges, present participle wedging, simple past and past participle wedged)

  1. To support or secure using a wedge.
    I wedged open the window with a screwdriver.
    • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Chapter 1
      "Did he take his bottle well?" Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it.
  2. To force into a narrow gap.
    He had wedged the package between the wall and the back of the sofa.
  3. To work wet clay by cutting or kneading for the purpose of homogenizing the mass and expelling air bubbles.
  4. For a computer program or system to get stuck in an unresponsive state, as if something had metaphorically wedged in its gears.
    My Linux kernel wedged after I installed the latest update.
Translations

Derived terms

Etymology 2

From Wedgewood, surname of the person who occupied this position on the first list of 1828.

Noun

wedge ‎(plural wedges)

  1. (Britain, Cambridge University, slang) The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.
    • 1873, Charles Astor Bristed, Five Years in an English University
      The last man is called the Wedge, corresponding to the Spoon in Mathematics.
Synonyms
  • wooden wedge
See also

Etymology

Middle English wegge ‎(“wedge”), Old English wecg ‎(“wedge”), from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz.

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /wɛdʒ/
  • Hyphenation: wedge
  • Rhymes: -ɛdʒ

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