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I think I just heard the word "hedgy" (rhymes with "edgy") used in conversation, with the deduced-from-context meaning of hesitant or tentative. It was something like

The news came in but everyone in the capital was a bit hedgy.

I looked it up in the usual places but did not find anything. Is this a word? Does it mean what I think it means? Does it have something to do with hedging one's bets?

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  • Can you ask the person who said it to spell it? I'm guessing it's a (accented?) pronunciation of edgy. "The news came in, but everyone in the capital was a bit edgy," meaning that they were a bit tense.
    – Nathan G.
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 19:56
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    The word hedgy exists, but I cannot say it's the word that is being used in the sentence shown by the OP. (Well, the statement was so circuitous and so hedgy.)
    – avpaderno
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 23:30

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It may mean that they are hedging, i.e., hedging their bets, which means, placing bets on both sides to insure that they do not lose too badly if the outcome is not the one they expected.

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A hedge is a "vague or evasive statement", so "hedgy" would mean tending to evade the answer. If people are said to be hedgy, I presume that means they are generally unwilling to give a straight answer.

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"hedgy" is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary under "hedge (v.)" section 9. If you look under "hedge" in Webester's new international or American Heritage, you'll also find it. OED gives "to avoid committing oneself irrevocably", so the adverb (quite common in American dialect) is simply "in a manner characterized by [the above]". -=wsh

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Almost certainly this was edgy, meaning nervous, jittery or on the edge.

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