behedge
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English *biheggen, *biheien, *beheȝen, from Old English behegian (“to hedge around”), equivalent to be- + hedge. Cognate with Dutch beheggen (“to put a hedge around, behedge”).
Verb[edit]
behedge (third-person singular simple present behedges, present participle behedging, simple past and past participle behedged)
- (transitive) To hedge about; surround with or as with a hedge.
- 1932, Thomas Burke, City of encounters: a London divertissement:
- [...] so that, though he had neither fixed flag not fixed father to cloud his thought and behedge his landscape, he could still, he used to say, share in the gush about ancestry.
- (transitive) To determine the boundary or limit of; define.
- 1905, William Cowper Brann, J.D. Shaw, Brann the iconoclast:
- Having been spawned in a royal bed — perchance the same in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive her paramours — he becomes the most powerful of princes — haloed with "that divinity which doth behedge a king" — and all [...]
- (transitive) To surround; beset; plague; hinder.
- 1927, James Branch Cabell, Straws and Prayer-Books:
- Reflection finds the circumstance unfortunate that most of the agreeable actions of life are either forbidden or else deplorably behedged with restrictions.
- 2005, William Cowper Brann, The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast Volume Three:
- [...] nor is it necessary to do more than call attention to a few indisputable facts to prove that the public policy he recommends would do little or nothing to ameliorate the hard conditions that behedge the toiling millions.
- (transitive) To straiten; restrict; constrain; limit.
- 1968, Edward Weldon Bailey, Texas law of wills:
- The remaining heirs are therefore not to be defeated by any of the restrictions that behedge the remedies available to the third-party beneficiary of a contract; [...]