wedged

[wejd] /wɛdʒd/
adjective
1.
having the shape of a wedge.
Origin
1545-55; wedge + -ed3

wedge

[wej] /wɛdʒ/
noun
1.
a piece of hard material with two principal faces meeting in a sharply acute angle, for raising, holding, or splitting objects by applying a pounding or driving force, as from a hammer.
Compare machine (def 3b).
2.
a piece of anything of like shape:
a wedge of pie.
3.
a cuneiform character or stroke of this shape.
4.
Meteorology. (formerly) an elongated area of relatively high pressure.
5.
something that serves to part, split, divide, etc.:
The quarrel drove a wedge into the party organization.
6.
Military. (formerly) a tactical formation generally in the form of a V with the point toward the enemy.
7.
Golf. a club with an iron head the face of which is nearly horizontal, for lofting the ball, especially out of sand traps and high grass.
8.
Optics. optical wedge.
9.
haček.
10.
Chiefly Coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island. a hero sandwich.
11.
a wedge heel or shoe with such a heel.
verb (used with object), wedged, wedging.
12.
to separate or split with or as if with a wedge (often followed by open, apart, etc.):
to wedge open a log.
13.
to insert or fix with a wedge.
14.
to pack or fix tightly:
to wedge clothes into a suitcase.
15.
to thrust, drive, fix, etc., like a wedge:
He wedged himself through the narrow opening.
16.
Ceramics. to pound (clay) in order to remove air bubbles.
17.
to fell or direct the fall of (a tree) by driving wedges into the cut made by the saw.
verb (used without object), wedged, wedging.
18.
to force a way like a wedge (usually followed by in, into, through, etc.):
The box won't wedge into such a narrow space.
Origin
before 900; Middle English wegge (noun), Old English wecg; cognate with dialectal German Weck (Old High German wecki), Old Norse veggr
Related forms
wedgelike, adjective
unwedge, verb (used with object), unwedged, unwedging.
Synonyms
14. cram, jam, stuff, crowd, squeeze.
Regional variation note
10. See hero sandwich.
Examples from the web for wedged
  • In that case, my anthropological observations were wedged between call-in queries to my fellow guest, a veterinarian.
  • It wedged itself so far up in my ear that they couldn't get it.
  • Yet, they could be in there, wedged deeply between your ears.
  • Instead, wedged between the interior plaster wall and exterior clapboard is a non-load-bearing wall of bricks.
  • He wedged his camera through the gap and took the only picture possible.
  • It comes naturally, even when discussing issues that haven't necessarily been wedged into the polar, partisan dynamic.
  • Guzman wedged her hand through a crack in the wall, and felt someone take it.
  • The table was pushed to one side, and chairs were wedged around the couch.
  • When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.
  • She found the parcel in the car, deliberately wedged in the crack of the seat, and went back to the house to tell him.
British Dictionary definitions for wedged

wedge

/wɛdʒ/
noun
1.
a block of solid material, esp wood or metal, that is shaped like a narrow V in cross section and can be pushed or driven between two objects or parts of an object in order to split or secure them
2.
any formation, structure, or substance in the shape of a wedge: a wedge of cheese
3.
something such as an idea, action, etc, that tends to cause division
4.
a shoe with a wedge heel
5.
(golf) a club with a face angle of more than 50°, used for bunker shots (sand wedge) or pitch shots (pitching wedge)
6.
a wedge-shaped extension of the high pressure area of an anticyclone, narrower than a ridge
7.
(mountaineering) a wedge-shaped device, formerly of wood, now usually of hollow steel, for hammering into a crack to provide an anchor point
8.
any of the triangular characters used in cuneiform writing
9.
(formerly) a body of troops formed in a V-shape
10.
(photog) a strip of glass coated in such a way that it is clear at one end but becomes progressively more opaque towards the other end: used in making measurements of transmission density
11.
(Brit, slang) a bribe
12.
thin end of the wedge, anything unimportant in itself that implies the start of something much larger
verb
13.
(transitive) to secure with or as if with a wedge
14.
to squeeze or be squeezed like a wedge into a narrow space
15.
(transitive) to force apart or divide with or as if with a wedge
Derived Forms
wedgelike, adjective
wedgy, adjective
Word Origin
Old English wecg; related to Old Saxon weggi, Old High German wecki, Old Norse veggr wall
Word Origin and History for wedged

wedge

n.

Old English wecg "a wedge," from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz (cf. Old Norse veggr, Middle Dutch wegge, Dutch wig, Old High German weggi "wedge," German Weck "wedge-shaped bread roll"), of unknown origin. Wedge issue is attested from 1999.

v.

mid-15c., from wedge (n.). Related: Wedged; wedging.

Slang definitions & phrases for wedged

wedged

adjective

Behaving as if frozen; not responding to the keyboard (1980s+ Computers)


wedged in Technology


1. To be stuck, incapable of proceeding without help. This is different from having crashed. If the system has crashed, it has become totally non-functioning. If the system is wedged, it is trying to do something but cannot make progress; it may be capable of doing a few things, but not be fully operational. For example, a process may become wedged if it deadlocks with another (but not all instances of wedging are deadlocks). See also gronk, locked up, hosed. 2. Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "He's totally wedged - he's convinced that he can levitate through meditation." 3. [Unix] Specifically used to describe the state of a TTY left in a losing state by abort of a screen-oriented program or one that has messed with the line discipline in some obscure way.
There is some dispute over the origin of this term. It is usually thought to derive from a common description of recto-cranial inversion; however, it may actually have originated with older "hot-press" printing technology in which physical type elements were locked into type frames with wedges driven in by mallets. Once this had been done, no changes in the typesetting for that page could be made.
[Jargon File]

Idioms and Phrases with wedged

wedge

see: thin edge of the wedge