wedge
part of speech
noun (a wedge, wedges); verb (wedge, wedges, wedged, wedging)
meaning for a pupil
1) A piece of wood, metal or other material that is thick at one end and thin at the other, used to hold something in place or split something. tree →
2) A piece shaped like this: a wedge of cheese or lemon. tree →
3) (verb) To push or squeeze something into a tight space so it stays there. tree →
4) (verb) To hold something in place with a wedge: wedge the door open. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science: a wedge is one of the simple machines, used in axes and knives to split things. In maths: a slice of a circle or cake can be a wedge. In everyday life: door wedges, potato wedges, getting stuck («wedged in»).
examples
- Put a wedge under the door to keep it open. tree →
- An axe works like a wedge to split the log. tree →
- He cut a wedge of cheese for his sandwich. tree →
- My foot got wedged between two rocks. tree →
- We had potato wedges with dinner. tree →
- A cake cut into 8 equal wedges gives each piece one eighth. tree →
- Going into the large yard, he cut two oaken wedges, took a new wheel, and drove a wedge firmly into one end of its axle-box. tree →
note
Countable. Verb is regular: wedged, wedging (drop the e). Science fact: a wedge is a simple machine that turns a push into a sideways force. In fractions, equal wedges of a round cake show 1/8, 1/4 and so on.
In the corpora
- Swell sharks gulp water to puff themselves up and wedge into rock cracks so a predator cannot pull them out.
- Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks called cuneiform.
- Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks; the word cuneiform means wedge-shaped.
- A wedge, like an axe head or a door stop, is a ramp that turns one downward blow into strong sideways pushes.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «wedge» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.