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Cant vs Wedge - What's the difference?

cant | wedge |

As nouns the difference between cant and wedge

is that cant is , a hundred while wedge is one of the simple machines; a piece of material, such as metal or wood, thick at one edge and tapered to a thin edge at the other for insertion in a narrow crevice, used for splitting, tightening, securing, or levering () or wedge can be (uk|cambridge university|slang) the person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.

As a verb wedge is

to support or secure using a wedge.

cant

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) , cognate with chant.

Noun

(en-noun)
  • (countable) An argot, the jargon of a particular class or subgroup.
  • He had the look of a prince, but the cant of a fishmonger.
  • * 1836 , Three discourses preached before the Congregational Society in Watertown, page 65
  • I am aware that the phrase free inquiry has become too much a cant phrase soiled by the handling of the ignorant and the reckless by those who fall into the mistake of supposing that religion has its root in the understanding and by those who can see just far enough to doubt and no further.
  • (countable, uncountable) A private or secret language used by a religious sect, gang, or other group.
  • Shelta.
  • (uncountable, pejorative) Empty, hypocritical talk.
  • People claim to care about the poor of Africa, but it is largely cant .
  • * 1749 , , Book IV ch iv
  • He is too well grounded for all your philosophical cant to hurt.
  • * 1759-1770 ,
  • Of all the cants' which are canted in this canting world — though the '''cant''' of hypocrites may be the worst — the ' cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
  • (uncountable) Whining speech, such as that used by beggars.
  • (countable, heraldry) A blazon of a coat of arms that makes a pun upon the name of the bearer, canting arms.
  • (obsolete) A call for bidders at a public fair; an auction.
  • * Jonathan Swift
  • To sell their leases by cant .
    Synonyms
    * (private or secret language) argot, jargon, slang * (musical singing) chant, singsong

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To speak with the jargon of a class or subgroup.
  • * Ben Jonson
  • The doctor here, / When he discourseth of dissection, / Of vena cava and of vena porta, / The meseraeum and the mesentericum, / What does he else but cant ?
  • * Bishop Sanderson
  • that uncouth affected garb of speech, or canting language, if I may so call it
  • To speak in set phrases.
  • To preach in a singsong fashion, especially in a false or empty manner.
  • * Beaumont and Fletcher
  • the rankest rogue that ever canted
  • (heraldry) Of a blazon, to make a pun that references the bearer of a coat of arms.
  • (obsolete) To sell by auction, or bid at an auction.
  • (Jonathan Swift)
    (Webster 1913)

    Etymology 2

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) corner, niche
  • * Ben Jonson
  • The first and principal person in the temple was Irene, or Peace; she was placed aloft in a cant .
  • slope, the angle at which something is set.
  • *
  • Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay.
  • An outer or external angle.
  • An inclination from a horizontal or vertical line; a slope or bevel; a tilt.
  • (Totten)
  • A movement or throw that overturns something.
  • * 1830 , The Edinburgh Encyclopedia, volume 3, page 621
  • It is not only of great service in keeping the boat in her due position on the sea, but also in creating a tendency immediately to recover from any sudden cant , or lurch, from a heavy wave; and it is besides beneficial in diminishing the violence of beating against the sides of the vessel which she may go to relieve.
  • A sudden thrust, push, kick, or other impulse, producing a bias or change of direction; also, the bias or turn so give.
  • to give a ball a cant
  • (coopering) A segment forming a side piece in the head of a cask.
  • (Knight)
  • A segment of the rim of a wooden cogwheel.
  • (Knight)
  • (nautical) A piece of wood laid upon the deck of a vessel to support the bulkheads.
  • Verb

    (en verb)
  • To set (something) at an angle.
  • to cant''' a cask; to '''cant a ship
  • To give a sudden turn or new direction to.
  • to cant''' round a stick of timber; to '''cant a football
  • To bevel an edge or corner.
  • To overturn so that the contents are emptied.
  • Etymology 3

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To divide or parcel out.
  • Etymology 4

    From (etyl), presumably from (etyl) *

    Alternative forms

    * kant

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (British, dialect) lively, lusty.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    wedge

    English

    Etymology 1

    (etyl)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • One of the simple machines; a piece of material, such as metal or wood, thick at one edge and tapered to a thin edge at the other for insertion in a narrow crevice, used for splitting, tightening, securing, or levering ().
  • Stick a wedge under the door, will you? It keeps blowing shut.
  • A piece (of food etc.) having this shape.
  • Can you cut me a wedge of cheese?
  • (geometry) A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
  • (figurative) Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things.
  • * 2013 September 28, , " London Is Special, but Not That Special," New York Times (retrieved 28 September 2013):
  • It is one of the ironies of capital cities that each acts as a symbol of its nation, and yet few are even remotely representative of it. London has always set itself apart from the rest of Britain — but political, economic and social trends are conspiring to drive that wedge deeper.
  • (archaic) A flank of cavalry acting to split some portion of an opposing army, charging in an inverted V formation.
  • (golf) A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories.
  • A group of geese or swans when they are in flight in a V formation.
  • (in the plural) Wedge-heeled shoes.
  • (colloquial, British) A quantity of money.
  • I made a big fat wedge from that job.
  • (typography, US) =
  • * 1982 , Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language (3rd ed.), page 49
  • The wedge is used in Czech and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, ha?ek .
  • * 1996 , and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page xxvi
  • The tilde and the circumflex have a place in the ASCII scheme but the wedge and the umlaut do not.
  • * 1999 , Florian Coulmas, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems , page 193, “há?ek”
  • The há?ek or ‘wedge'’ is a diacritic commonly used in Slavic orthographies. As a tone mark the ' wedge is used iconically for a falling-rising tone as in Chinese Pinyin.
  • (phonetics) The (l) character , which denotes an .
  • * 1996 , and William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed.), page 19
  • Turned V is referred to as “Wedge ” by some phoneticians, but this seems inadvisable to us, because the ha?ek accent (?) is also called that in names like Wedge C for (?).
  • (label) The symbol , denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.
  • Synonyms
    * (group of geese) skein * (l)

    Verb

  • To support or secure using a wedge.
  • I wedged open the window with a screwdriver.
  • * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), (w, Jacob's Room) Chapter 1
  • "Did he take his bottle well?" Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it.
  • To force into a narrow gap.
  • He had wedged the package between the wall and the back of the sofa.
  • To work wet clay by cutting or kneading for the purpose of homogenizing the mass and expelling air bubbles.
  • Derived terms

    * wedge issue * wedge politics * wedgie

    Etymology 2

    From Wedgewood, surname of the person who occupied this position on the first list of 1828.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (UK, Cambridge University, slang) The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.
  • * 1873 , Charles Astor Bristed, Five Years in an English University
  • The last man is called the Wedge , corresponding to the Spoon in Mathematics.
    Synonyms
    * wooden wedge
    See also
    * wooden spoon