ridge
Definitions
General English
Agriculture
- noun a long raised section of ground, occurring as part of a mountain range, in a field, on a beach or on the ocean floor
- noun a long narrow band of high pressure leading away from the centre of an anticyclone
- noun a long raised section of earth, made by ploughing up and down on either side of the furrow. In systematic ploughing, ridges first mark out land in a field before the plough is reset for normal work and the field is ploughed.
Aviation
- noun a long zone of relatively high atmospheric pressure
Cars & Driving
- noun the cutting edge of a screw thread (surmounting the flanks)
Construction
Medical
- noun a long raised part on the surface of a bone or organ
Military
- noun a long narrow line of high ground, formed where two slopes meet each other
Real Estate
- noun the line along the top of a roof where the two sloping sides meet
Origin & History of “ridge”
Old English hrycg denoted ‘the back’, as its modern Germanic relatives – German rücken, Dutch rug, Swedish rygg, and Danish ryg – still do. But a gradual semantic focussing on the ‘backbone’ led by the 14th century to the emergence of ‘long narrow raised area’, today’s main meaning. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *khrugjaz, which may have been related to Sanskrit krun̄c- ‘be crooked’ – in which case the notion underlying the word would be of a ‘bent back’.
