Hedge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word hedge may be used to refer to an artificial boundary, erected to contain or protect:
- A hedge or hedgerow in agriculture and in gardening is a lineal barrier or boundary made from growing plants planted and grown in such a way that their limbs intertwine. This is the original meaning of the word. It may also refer to the Osage-orange tree, sometimes called the "hedge tree".
- A hedge in gambling and finance is a bet or investment taken to reduce loss, should another bet or investment turn out unfavourably.
- Hedges in linguistics are intentionally non-committal or ambiguous sentence fragments, such as "sort of", "kind of", "like".
or as a prefix denoting something "mean, vile, of the lowest class" [Johnson] att. 1530, in the sense of plying one's trade under a hedge: e.g. a hedge-priest or a hedge-lawyer.
The word may be used as both a noun and a verb: e.g. plant a hedge and hedge one's bets.