hedgehog

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, characterized by their spiny back and often by the habit of rolling up into a ball when attacked, native to Afro-Eurasia.

   [L]ike Hedg-hogs vvhich / Lye tumbling in my bare-foote vvay, and mount / Their pricks at my foot-fall: ſometime am I / All vvound vvith Adders, vvho vvith clouen tongues / Doe hiſſe me into madneſſe: […]

2. 2
   noun

   Ellipsis of Czech hedgehog (“an antitank obstacle constructed from three steel rails”).

   Ukrainian civilians have been DIY-ing hedgehogs, welding two bars or beams at an angle to make a cross and then adding a third to ensure it holds its shape even if it's knocked over.

3. 3
   noun

   A type of chocolate cake (or slice), somewhat similar to an American brownie.

   2005, Paul Mitchell, The Favourite, Frank Moorhouse, The Best Australian Stories 2005, page 145, There are hedgehogs with sultanas as well as breadcrumbs, carrot cakes and fruitcakes and banana walnut loaves.

4. 4
   noun

   A form of dredging machine.

   The first machines merely loosened, but did not raise the stuff, a scouring being afterwards effected by means of sluices. These machines consisted of large bars or prongs placed vertically in a frame, and being fastened to a barge placed in the line of the sluices, the whole was inpelled forward by the current, thereby scouring the bed. Such a machine, called a hedgehog, is still used in Lincolnshire.

5. 5
   noun

   The edible fungus Hydnum repandum.

   Hedgehogs fruit from autumn until late spring. Many consumers are still unfamiliar with hedgehogs, and they have a relatively small commercial trade.

6. 6
   noun

   Someone who has one big overarching personal philosophy or worldview.

   Austin was patiently and painstakingly concerned with truth within limitations. He was a hedgehog, not a fox.

7. 7
   verb

   To make use of a hedgehog barricade as a defensive maneuver.

   Hedgehogging means — let us call a spade a spade — that we're were encircled: It's something that has been forced upon us, a predicament from which we ought to try to escape as fast as possible.

8. 8
   verb

   To array with spiky projections like the quills of a hedgehog.

   All around were styrofoam cups hedgehogged with butts, and the threebar electric heater was encrusted with bits of charcoaled tobacco and frazzled stands of hair where people had stooped down to spark up.

Etymology

From Middle English heyghoge; equivalent to hedge + hog. Eclipsed non-native Middle English yrchoun, irchoun (“hedgehog”), from Old French hirchoun, herichon (“hedgehog”); and displaced earlier Middle English il, from Old English īl, iġil (“hedgehog”). In the philosophical sense, from the 1953 essay The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin. Compare typologically Korean 고슴도치 (goseumdochi) (<<+ Middle Korean 돝 (twoth, “pig, swine”)).