different between wedge vs disphenoid

English

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /w?d?/
• Hyphenation: wedge
• Rhymes: -?d?

Etymology 1

Middle English wegge (“wedge”), from Old English wecg (“wedge”), from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz.

Noun

wedge (plural wedges)

1. 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.

2. A piece (of food, metal, wood etc.) having this shape.

   Can you cut me a wedge of cheese?

   We ordered a box of baked potato wedges with our pizza.

3. (geometry) A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends.
4. (figuratively) Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things.
   • 2013 September 28, Kenan Malik, "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.

5. (archaic) A flank of cavalry acting to split some portion of an opposing army, charging in an inverted V formation.
6. (golf) A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories.
7. A group of geese, swans or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation.
8. One of a pair of wedge-heeled shoes.
9. (colloquial, Britain) A quantity of money.

   I made a big fat wedge from that job.

10. (US, regional) A sandwich made on a long, cylindrical roll.

    I ordered a chicken parm wedge from the deli.
11. (typography, US) há?ek
    • 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, Geoffrey Keith Pullum 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.

12. (phonetics) The IPA character ?, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel.
    • 1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum 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 (?).

13. (mathematics) The symbol ?, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction.
14. (meteorology) A wedge tornado.
15. (finance) A market trend characterized by a contracting range in prices coupled with an upward trend in prices (a rising wedge) or a downward trend in prices (a falling wedge).

Synonyms

• (group of geese): skein
• (phonetics: IPA character ???): turned v

Derived terms

• wedge gauge, wedge gage
• wedge gear

Translations

Verb

wedge (third-person singular simple present wedges, present participle wedging, simple past and past participle wedged)

1. (transitive) To support or secure using a wedge.

   I wedged open the window with a screwdriver.

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, 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.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To force into a narrow gap.

   He had wedged the package between the wall and the back of the sofa.

   I wedged into the alcove and listened carefully.
3. (transitive) To work wet clay by cutting or kneading for the purpose of homogenizing the mass and expelling air bubbles.
4. (computing, informal, intransitive) Of a computer program or system: to get stuck in an unresponsive state.

   My Linux kernel wedged after I installed the latest update.

5. (transitive) To cleave with a wedge.
6. (transitive) To force or drive with a wedge.
7. (transitive) To shape into a wedge.

Translations

Derived terms

Etymology 2

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

Noun

wedge (plural wedges)

1. (Britain, Cambridge University slang) The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos.

Synonyms

• wooden wedge

See also

• wooden spoon

English

Etymology

From di- (“twice, double”) +? sphenoid (“wedge-shaped crystal or bone of the skull”).

Adjective

disphenoid (not comparable)

1. (mineralogy) Of or pertaining to a wedge-shaped crystal form of the tetragonal or orthorhombic system.
2. (mineralogy) Of or pertaining to a crystal form bounded by eight scalene triangles arranged in pairs, constituting a tetragonal scalenohedron.

Noun

disphenoid (plural disphenoids)

1. (geometry) A non-regular tetrahedron whose four faces are congruent acute-angled triangles.
   • 1973, H. S. M. Coxeter, 3rd Edition, unnumbered page,

     To make a model of a disphenoid, cut out an acute angled triangle and fold it along the joins of the mid-points of the sides. The disphenoid is said to be rhombic or tetragonal according as the triangle is isosceles or scalene.

   • 1977, Elizabeth A. Wood, Crystals and Light: An Introduction to Optical Crystallography, 2nd Revised Edition, page 8,

     If you rotate the [tetragonal] disphenoid 90° around its 2-fold axis and then perform the operation of inversion through the center-point of the object, it will occupy its original position again.

   • 1993, Horst Martini, A Hierarchical Classification of Euclidean Polytopes with Regularity Properties, Tibor Bisztriczky, Peter McMullen, Rolf Schneider, Asia Ivic Weiss (editors), Polytopes: Abstract, Convex and Computational, Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, page 83,

     In addition it should be remarked that there are two types of disphenoids, with different symmetries: the tetragonal disphenoid (having isosceles facets) and the rhombic one.

Synonyms

• (non-regular tetrahedron with congruent faces): bisphenoid, equifacial tetrahedron, isosceles tetrahedron

Derived terms

• rhombic disphenoid
• snub disphenoid
• tetragonal disphenoid