Hello mrfrog
Thank-you for an intriguing question. I was interested to find that
"hedge a bet" can be traced all the way back to the Anglo-Saxons
planting rows of hawthorn which they called 'hege'.
Hedging a bet comes from the same linguistic roots as hedging a field.
The idea of a hedge as a defence or enclosure making something secure
is the starting point for the image of hedging bets.
"Hedge" as a metaphor for making one's bet safer, by enclosing it
within another, less risky bet dates back to the seventeenth century.
"To secure oneself against loss (on a bet etc.) by betting etc. on the
other side." This sense of "hedge" dates from 1672 according to the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED). You can find confirmation online at:
Etymology Dictionary
http://www.etymonline.com/h2etym.htm
They say: " 'insure oneself against loss,' as in a bet, is from 1672."
The OED also explains:
"Hedge in, to secure (a debt) app. by including it in a larger one
which is better secured; to include within the limits of something
else."
By the nineteenth century the idea of hedging bets was
well-established.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, first published in 1898,
states that "the hedge is a defence":
"To hedge, in betting, is to defend oneself from loss by crossbets.
As a hedge is a defence, so crossbetting is hedging. (E. Hunt: The
Town, ix.)
'He [Godolphin] began to think … that he had betted too deep … and
that it was time to hedge.'— Macaulay: England, vol. iv. chap. xviii."
(Macaulay's book was first published in 1848.)
Bartleby.com
http://www.bartleby.com/81/8100.html
There are more examples of 19th. century usage in the OED:
1813 "I kept hedging my bets as I laid them."
1819 "No man should venture to bet, who could not hedge well."
In 1913 Webster's gave these definitions:
"To hedge a bet, to bet upon both sides; that is, after having bet on
one side, to bet also on the other, thus guarding against loss."
"To reduce the risk of a wager by making a bet against the side or
chance one has bet on."
Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary 1913
http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/Webster/data/726.html
(If you're into grammar, you'll notice that 'hedge' in the betting
sense is used in both transitive and intransitive forms and that's why
one dictionary gives two similar sounding definitions. In Webster's
the first definition is for the transitive verb and the second for the
intransitive.)
By the early twentieth century the gambling sense had been extended to
a more general idea of balancing financial risks. The Oxford
Dictionary gives 1909 as the date for this meaning: "To insure against
risk of loss by entering into contracts which balance one another."
Modern definitions of "hedge" as a verb include these from the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
"to protect oneself from losing or failing by a counterbalancing
action <hedge a bet>"
"to protect oneself financially: as
a : to buy or sell commodity futures as a protection against loss due
to price fluctuation
b : to minimize the risk of a bet"
Merriam-Webster
http://www.m-w.com/
Nowadays we often take the "hedge your bets" idea beyond the purely
financial to mean a more general kind of securing one's position. For
instance, the Cambridge Dictionary says:
"If you hedge your bets, you protect yourself against loss by
supporting more than one possible result or both sides in a
competition."
Cambridge International Dictionary of English
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
However, it seems that although "hedge" has long meant not committing
oneself entirely to a particular point of view, "hedge one's bets" was
literally about bets and financial risk until perhaps the
mid-twentieth century. I did find a reference to "hedge (betting)"
meaning to "prevaricate" in a 1952 revised edition of Brewer's Phrase
and Fable but it is the word "hedge" on its own, without any bets,
which until quite recently had the meaning of "shift, shuffle, dodge;
leave open a way of retreat or escape" (OED)
This meaning of 'avoiding commitment' for "hedge" dates back to 1598.
It is also to be found in a much quoted essay by Oliver Wendell
Holmes:
" Prophesy as much as you like, but always hedge. Say that you think
the rebels are weaker than is commonly supposed, but, on the other
hand, that they may prove to be even stronger than is anticipated. Say
what you like,—only don’t be too peremptory and dogmatic....."
"BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER (1861)" from "PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF
LIFE, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS", By Oliver Wendell Holmes
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext01/pages11.txt
A twentieth-first-century writer expressing a similar thought would
probably use the phrase "hedge your bets" rather than Holmes' "hedge".
But either way "hedge" still seems to have plenty to do with playing
safe:
"TO HEDGE A BET. “Why You Say It?” by Webb Garrison (Rutledge Hill
Press, 1992) has this explanation for the phrase: “Hedge. Throughout
much of northern Europe, early farmers planted bushes and shrubs to
serve as fences and boundary lines. Anglo-Saxons were partial to
hawthorn, a row of which they called a ‘hege.’ It was a mark of
caution to plant hawthorn around a field, or hedge it. Eventually the
name of the barrier came to be used in connection with many kinds of
safeguards. As a result, we say that a person who wagers on several
horses rather than only one hedges his bet. Many a person manages to
hedge by avoiding direct promises and unqualified commitments."
The Phrase Finder
http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/1/messages/2678.html
Thanks once again for the interesting question. I hope this helps.
Please let me know if anything is unclear or needs further explanation
and I'll do my best to assist.
Regards - Leli
search terms:
hedge hedging hedged bet betting
etymology origin
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other references:
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition. OUP (1956)
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, revised edition. Cassell
(1952) |
