/ɹɪd͡ʒ/
OriginFrom Middle English rigge, rygge, (also rig, ryg, rug), from Old English hryċġ (“back, spine, ridge, elevated surface”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrugi, from Proto-Germanic *hrugjaz (“back”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)krewk-, *(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”).
- The back of any animal; especially the upper or projecting part of the back of a quadruped.
“He thought it was no time to ſtay, / And let the Night too ſteal away, / But in a trice advanced the Knight, / Upon the Bare Ridge, Bolt upright, / And groping out for Ralpho’s Jade, / He found the Sa”
- Any extended protuberance; a projecting line or strip.
“The plough threw up ridges of earth between the furrows.”
- The line along which two sloping surfaces meet which diverge towards the ground.
“mountain ridge”
“It was not far from the house; but the ground sank into a depression there, and the ridge of it behind shut out everything except just the roof of the tallest hayrick.”
- The highest point on a roof, represented by a horizontal line where two roof areas intersect, running the length of the area.
“Maccario, it was evident, did not care to take the risk of blundering upon a picket, and a man led them by twisting paths until at last the hacienda rose blackly before them. Appleby could see it diml”
- The highest portion of the glacis proceeding from the salient angle of the covered way.
“the British Guards lie down behind a ridge to avoid the shot and shell from the opposite heights”
- A chain of mountains.
“[…]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 Engliſhman durſt”
- A chain of hills.
- A long narrow elevation on an ocean bottom.
- An elongated region of high atmospheric pressure.
- transitiveTo form into a ridge.
- intransitiveTo extend in ridges.
- countable, uncountableA village in Hertsmere district, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
- countable, uncountableA toponymic surname from Middle English, named after the natural feature.
- countable, uncountableA male given name transferred from the surname.
Formsridges(plural) · rig(alternative, dialectal) · ridges(present, singular, third-person) · ridging(participle, present) · ridged(participle, past) · ridged(past) · Ridges(plural)