unwedge

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, wedg·ing.

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, wedg·ing.

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.

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 wedgea 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. British slang a bribe
12. thin end of the wedge anything unimportant in itself that implies the start of something much larger

verb

13. (tr) to secure with or as if with a wedge
14. to squeeze or be squeezed like a wedge into a narrow space
15. (tr) to force apart or divide with or as if with a wedge

v.mid-15c., from wedge (n.). Related: Wedged; wedging. 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. see thin edge of the wedge.