ridge

• rig (dialectal)

From 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”).

• (UK, US) enPR: rĭj, IPA^(key): /ɹɪd͡ʒ/
• Rhymes: -ɪd͡ʒ

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ridge (plural ridges)

1. (anatomy) The back of any animal; especially the upper or projecting part of the back of a quadruped.
   • 1678, [Samuel Butler], “[The Third Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The Third and Last Part, London: […] Robert Horne, […], published 1679, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, canto I, pages 237–238:

     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 Saddle too was ſtraid […]

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

   Antonym: groove

   The plough threw up ridges of earth between the furrows.

3. The line along which two sloping surfaces meet which diverge towards the ground.

   mountain ridge

   • 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:

     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.

4. The highest point on a roof, represented by a horizontal line where two roof areas intersect, running the length of the area.
   • 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 26, in The Dust of Conflict:

     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 dimly, a blur of shadowy buildings with the ridge of roof parapet alone cutting hard and sharp against the clearing sky.

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.
   • 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [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 Engliſhman durſt ſet 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

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

• ridging hoe

• Rhodesian Ridgeback

• crest

• derig, dirge, gride, redig