hedge

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English [edit]

A maze of hedges.

Etymology [edit]

From Middle English hegge, from Old English hecg, from Proto-Germanic *hagjō (compare Dutch heg, German Hecke), from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰyo-. More at haw.

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

Wikipedia has an article on:

Wikipedia hedge (plural hedges)

  1. A thicket of bushes, usually thorn bushes; especially, such a thicket planted as a fence between any two portions of land; and also any sort of shrubbery, as evergreens, planted in a line or as a fence; particularly, such a thicket planted round a field to fence it, or in rows to separate the parts of a garden.
    He trims the hedge once a week.
  2. A non-committal or intentionally ambiguous statement.
  3. (finance) Contract or arrangement reducing one's exposure to risk (for example the risk of price movements or interest rate movements).
    The asset class acts as a hedge.
  4. (UK, Ireland, noun adjunct) Used attributively, with figurative indication of a person's upbringing, or professional activities, taking place by the side of the road; third-rate.
    • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, II.2:
      Attalus [...] made him so dead-drunke that insensibly and without feeling he might prostitute his beauty as the body of a common hedge-harlot, to Mulettiers, Groomes and many of the abject servants of his house.
    • 1899, Henry Rider Haggard, A Farmer's Year: Being His Commonplace Book for 1898[1], page 222:
      This particular wheelwright is only a hedge carpenter, without even a shop of his own, […]
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Folio Society 1973, p. 639:
      He then traced them from place to place, till at last he found two of them drinking together, with a third person, at a hedge-tavern near Aldersgate.

Derived terms [edit]

terms derived from hedge (noun)

Translations [edit]

thicket of bushes planted in a row

Verb [edit]

hedge (third-person singular simple present hedges, present participle hedging, simple past and past participle hedged)

  1. (transitive) To enclose.
  2. (transitive) To obstruct.
  3. (transitive, finance) To offset the risk associated with.
  4. (intransitive) To avoid verbal commitment.
    He carefully hedged his statements with weasel words.
  5. (intransitive) To construct or repair a hedge.
  6. (intransitive, finance) To reduce one's exposure to risk.

Derived terms [edit]

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