Wedge

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈwÉ›dÊ’/
• Rhymes: -É›dÊ’

Middle English wegge ("wedge"), Old English wecg ("wedge")

Full definition of wedge

Noun

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 (Wedge (mechanical device)).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?
3. (geometry) A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
4. (figurative) 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 or swans when they are in flight in a V formation.
8. (in the plural) Wedge-heeled shoes.
9. (colloquial, British) 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 49The wedge is used in Czech and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, haček.
• 1996, Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page xxviThe 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 , which denotes an Open-mid back unrounded vowel.
• 1996, Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page 19Turned 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).

Synonyms

• (group of geese) skein
• (phonetics: IPA character ) turned v

Verb

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.

Derived terms

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

Noun

1. (UK, Cambridge University, slang) The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.

Synonyms

• wooden wedge