wedge
Meanings
noun
- 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.
- A piece (of food, metal, wood etc.) having this shape.
- Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things.
- A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
- A voussoir, one of the wedge-shaped blocks forming an arch or vault.
- A flank of cavalry acting to split some portion of an opposing army, charging in an inverted V formation.
- A group of geese, swans, or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.
- A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories.
- One of a pair of wedge-heeled shoes.
- An ingot.
- Silver or items made of silver collectively.
- A quantity of money.
verb
- To support or secure using a wedge.
- To force into a narrow gap.
- To pack (people or animals) together tightly into a mass.
- To work wet clay by cutting or kneading for the purpose of homogenizing the mass and expelling air bubbles.
- Of a computer program or system: to get stuck in an unresponsive state.
- To cleave with a wedge.
- To force or drive with a wedge.
- To shape into a wedge.
noun
- The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.
name
- A surname.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English wegge (“wedge”), from Old English weċġ (“wedge”), from Proto-West Germanic *wagi, from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz.
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.