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Hedgehogs

 [hej-hog, -hawg]  

hedge·hog

   [hej-hog, -hawg]
noun
1.
an Old World, insect-eating mammal of the genus Erinaceus, especially E. europaeus, having spiny hairs on the back and sides.
2.
the porcupine.
3.
Military.
a.
a portable obstacle made of crossed logs in the shape of an hourglass, usually laced with barbed wire.
b.
an obstructive device consisting of steel bars, angle irons, etc., usually embedded in concrete, designed to damage and impede the boats and tanks of a landing force on a beach.
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Origin:
1400–50; late Middle English heyghoge. See hedge, hog

Related forms
hedge·hog·gy, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Hedgehogs is always a great word to know.
So is slumgullion. Does it mean:
a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.
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insectivore
Matching Quote
"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.... Their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classifica tion, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second."
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