Meaning & use
hedge
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Meanings
nouncountable
A line of bushes or small trees planted close together to mark a boundary or give shelter.
Grammar: Plural hedges: a garden hedge, a row of hedges.
Patterns
- trim a hedge
- a hedge around something
He spends Sunday mornings trimming the hedge.
A tall hedge separates our yard from the road.
Sparrows nested deep in the hedge.
verbintransitive
To avoid giving a clear answer or promise, usually so that you cannot be proved wrong.
Grammar: Often used alone or with on: she hedged on the date.
Patterns
- hedge on something
- hedge about something
Asked about the deadline, the manager hedged.
He hedged on whether he would attend the wedding.
Stop hedging and tell us what you really think.
verbtransitive or intransitivefinance
To protect yourself against loss by making a second choice or investment that will pay off if the first one fails.
Grammar: Often used in the idiom hedge your bets, and with against.
Patterns
- hedge against something
- hedge your bets
Farmers can hedge against falling prices by selling crops in advance.
She hedged her bets by applying to two colleges.
Investors bought gold to hedge against inflation.
nouncountablespecialist
A word or phrase such as 'perhaps' or 'sort of' that makes a statement less definite, or a financial arrangement that protects against loss.
Grammar: Plural hedges; used in linguistics and finance.
Patterns
- a hedge against something
Gold is often seen as a hedge against inflation.
Words like 'maybe' are hedges that soften a claim.
Word forms
| third person singular | hedges |
|---|---|
| past tense | hedged |
| past participle | hedged |
| -ing form | hedging |
| plural | hedges |
Common combinations
- trim a hedge
- The neighbor trims the hedge every spring.
- hedge your bets
- She is hedging her bets by keeping her old job for now.
- hedge against inflation
- Property is often used to hedge against inflation.
- privet hedge
- A thick privet hedge hides the garden.
- hedge on
- The senator hedged on the tax question.
Synonyms and how they differ
- fence
- A fence is built from wood or metal, whereas a hedge is made of living plants.
- equivocate
- Equivocate is more formal and suggests deliberately vague speech, often to mislead, while hedge can be simply cautious.
- dodge
- Dodge means to avoid a question completely, but hedge means to answer in an uncommitted way.
- insure
- Insure means to buy protection from an insurer, whereas hedge often means balancing one risk with another investment.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: hedge or hedgerow?
hedge vs hedgerow
A hedgerow is a long, often wild hedge with trees along a field, while a hedge can be a small garden border.
Practice
The reporter asked if the company would cut jobs, but the CEO hedged. What did the CEO do?
Choose one answer.
To hedge is to avoid a firm commitment. A clear yes is the opposite, and refusing to speak would be a refusal rather than a hedge.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “hedge”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.