Wedge

Wedge (pronounced wej)

(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.

(2) A piece of anything of like shape.

(3) A cuneiform character or stroke of this shape.

(4) In historic meteorology, a wedge-shaped extension of the high pressure area of an anticyclone, narrower than a ridge.

(5) Figuratively, something that serves to part, split, divide etc.

(6) In military use, a tactical cavalry formation generally in the form of a V with the point toward the enemy.

(7) In 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.  Also, as “Texas wedge” a slang term for using the putter to play a shot while ball is not on the green; origin lies in the historically hard, dry fairways on Texan golf courses.

(8) In optics, a prism of this shape.

(9) In the design of the internal combustion engine, a once popular shape of combustion chamber.

(10) In shoe design, a wedge shaped heel, tapering to the ball of the foot. 

(11) In observational ornithology, describes geese, swans or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.

(12) In phonetics, the IPA character ⟨ʌ⟩, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel.

(13) In typography, háček quotations ▼.

(14) In mathematics, the symbol ∧, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.

(15) In geometry, a five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.

(16) In political science, a strategy or pattern of behaviour by a politician, political party, or advocacy group intended to have a divisive effect on one's political opponents or on the electorate, by emphasizing an issue which polarizes opinion along racial, class, regional, or other demographic lines.

(17) In mountaineering a wedge-shaped device, formerly of wood, now usually of hollow steel, for hammering into a crack to provide an anchor point

Pre 900: From the Middle English wegge, from the Old English wecg (a wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz (source also of the Old Norse veggr, the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge) and the dialectal German Weck (a wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi.  It was cognate with the dialectal German weck derived from the Old High German wecki and Old Norse veggr (wall).  The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare).

From the early fifteenth century, the verb form emerged in the sense of "jam in place with a wedge; tighten with a wedge", the figurative sense "drive or pack (into)" dating from 1720.  The meaning "split (something) apart with a wedge" is attested from 1853.  The general use to describe things shaped like a wedge began in the 1610s and use of the phrase "thin edge of the wedge" meaning a minor change that leads to a major change, especially one thought undesirable, dates from the mid nineteenth century.  Although the style had been produced earlier, the type of women’s shoe called “wedge” was advertised in 1939, a spike in the popularity of the style in the early 1970s cause a brief, world-wide shortage of cork because demand suddenly exceeded the supply which relied substantially on the Portuguese crop.

Wedge Politics

Wedge politics is the art of identifying an issue of importance to one’s own political base but which polarises opinion in that of one’s political opponents.  A wedge issue is of a controversial or divisive nature (guns, abortion, refugees et al) which splits apart a demographic or population group which tends to be clustered in the voting base of an opposing political party.  Wedge issues can be advertised or publicly aired in an attempt to weaken the unity of a population, with the goal of enticing polarized individuals to give support to an opponent or to withdraw their support entirely out of disillusionment.

Some dictionaries cite 1999 as the origin of wedge issue as a phrase but it dates from 1990, in the run-up to that year’s mid-term US congressional elections.  A official under Jimmy Carter (b 1924; US President 1977-1981), Stuart Eizenstst (b 1943; Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director, White House Domestic Policy Staff 1977-1981) coined the term to describe the tactics being deployed under George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) to use affirmative action guidelines and quotas as issues “…to split the coalition of working-class whites and blacks, the two constituencies Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) unified on economic grounds.  The image came to mind of a wedge being driven."  It was a refinement of what emerged during the Reagan presidency, the use of social issues to persuade the working-class to vote against their own economic interests.  In the jargon of political science, they’re also called third rail issues.  It filled a political-linguistic need for fresh labels.  As a phrase, wedge issue had a certain earthy appeal, a wedge being a familiar and vivid metaphor, more memorable than the earlier usage hot-button issue, which was too vague to summon the mental imagery and more widely used and understood than the Latinate polarization so beloved by political scientists.  Generational change means wedge issues can return to haunt the authors.  In the 1990s, gay marriage was used successfully by the Republicans to drive a wedge between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party but within a quarter-century, the universe had shifted and it was the Republicans fractured by the issue.  The hunter had been captured by the game.

The Wedge Combustion Chamber

So-named because the inside top of the cylinder head is shaped like an inclined basin, with the valves sitting at an angle so that the space between the piston and cylinder head looks like a wedge, wedge-shaped combustion chambers have been used by almost every mainstream manufacturer of internal combustion engines.  A relatively simple design, the chamber resembles an inclined basin recessed into the deck of the head, the fuel/air mix supplied (usually) by inline valves, often tilted to accommodate the sloping roof.  The spark plug tends to be located on the thick side of the wedge, positioned most often midway between the valves.

Lindsay Lohan fastening Louis Vuitton patent leather cork wedges.

Designed to exploit the nature of fluid dynamics, the chamber’s steep walls deflect the air/fuel flow path, forcing it to move in a downward spiral around the cylinder axis.  During the compression stroke, the compressed air/fuel area reduces to such an extent that the trapped mixture is violently thrust from the thin to the thick end of the chamber, building up significant kinetic energy, which, when ignited, improves the burn rate and thus the extraction of energy: the power.  Another advantage, refined particularly from the mid 1970s, is that the wedge-shaped combustion chamber tends to have a smaller surface area than other designs and so there is less space on which droplets can condense, assisting in reducing the volume of fuel remaining unburnt after the combustion cycle, thus reducing hydrocarbon emissions.  Ultimately, the wedge-shaped combustion chamber is not as efficient or able to produce as much power as other designs but is well-suited to engines which need to deliver a compromise between torque, power and economy over a wide operating range.  It has the additional benefit of being inherently cheaper to build than others because of the simplicity of the casting and machining processes required and the structure of its valve train tends to require fewer moving parts.