different between prominence vs ridge

English

Etymology

From obsolete French prominence (compare proéminence), from Latin prominentia.

Noun

prominence (countable and uncountable, plural prominences)

1. The state of being prominent: widely known or eminent.

   • “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

2. Relative importance.
3. A bulge: something that bulges out or is protuberant or projects from a form.
4. (topography) Autonomous height; relative height or prime factor; a concept used in the categorization of hills and mountains.

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• rig (dialectal)

Etymology

From Middle English rigge, rygge, (also rig, ryg, rug), from Old English hry?? (“back, spine, ridge, elevated surface”), from Proto-Germanic *hrugjaz (“back”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kreuk-, *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Cognate with Scots rig (“back, spine, ridge”), North Frisian reg (“back”), West Frisian rêch (“back”), Dutch rug (“back, ridge”), German Rücken (“back, ridge”), Swedish rygg (“back, spine, ridge”), Icelandic hryggur (“spine”). Cognate to Albanian kërrus (“to bend one's back”) and kurriz (“back”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) enPR: r?j, IPA^(key): /??d?/
• Rhymes: -?d?

Noun

ridge (plural ridges)

1. (anatomy) The back of any animal; especially the upper or projecting part of the back of a quadruped.
   • 1663–1678, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part III, canto I, pages 91–92:

     He though it was no time to ?tay, / And let the Night too ?teal away, / But in a trice advanced the Knight, / Upon the Bare Ridge, Bolt upright, / And groping out for Ralpho’s Jade, / He found the Saddle too was ?traid […]

2. Any extended protuberance; a projecting line or strip.

   Antonym: groove

3. The line along which two sloping surfaces meet which diverge towards the ground.
4. The highest point on a roof, represented by a horizontal line where two roof areas intersect, running the length of the area.
5. (fortifications) The highest portion of the glacis proceeding from the salient angle of the covered way.
   • 1853-1855, Joachim Hayward Stocqueler , The Life of Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington

     the British Guards lie down behind a ridge to avoid the shot and shell from the opposite heights

6. A chain of mountains.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, Richard II, [Act I, scene i], lines 62–66:

     […] Which to maintaine, I would allow him oddes, / And meete him, were I tide to runne afoote, / Euen to the frozen ridges of the Alpes, / Or any other ground inhabitable, / Where euer Engli?hman dur?t ?et his foote.

7. A chain of hills.
8. (oceanography) A long narrow elevation on an ocean bottom.
9. (meteorology) An elongated region of high atmospheric pressure.
   • Antonym: trough

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

ridge (third-person singular simple present ridges, present participle ridging, simple past and past participle ridged)

1. (transitive) To form into a ridge
2. (intransitive) To extend in ridges

Related terms

• Rhodesian Ridgeback

See also

• crest

Anagrams

• derig, dirge, gride, redig