Other forms: edges, edged, edging
The edge is where a thing stops. The edge of the table you catch your hip on, the edge of the cliff, the edge of the page where the writing runs out and the white begins.
A knife has an edge too — the thin sharp side — which is why the word turns up wherever cutting does. As a verb it means to move a little at a time: you edge along a narrow wall, you edge the car out into traffic. Then the figurative crowd arrives. An edge is an advantage: home support gives them the edge. On edge means nervous and ready to snap, which is not the same as on the edge, meaning about to fall off one. Take the edge off means to soften a thing, and edgy has drifted from tense to daring.
1nounedgeThe line where something stops — the outer limit of a surface, a space or a shape.~92%
“Don't put the glass so near the edge of the table.”
2nounshapeThe line where two faces of a solid meet.~2%
“A cube has twelve edges and eight corners.”
3nounthinThe thin sharp side of a blade.~2%
“The edge of the knife had gone blunt.”
4verbmoveTo move slowly and carefully, a little at a time.~2%
“He edged along the wall towards the door.”
5nounadvantageAn advantage over somebody else.~2%
“Their speed gave them the edge in the second half.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Edge runs back through Old English eċġ to a root that meant nothing but sharp: *h₂eḱ-. The same root gave Latin its needle, acus, and Greek its point, ἀκμή, so the family is a drawerful of things that come to a fine end. The edge of a table is the blunt cousin of a blade.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eḱ- — sharp
Proto-Germanic
*agjō
Proto-West Germanic
*aggju
Old English
eċġ
Middle English
egge
English, today
edge
From Middle English egge, from Old English eċġ, from Proto-West Germanic aggju, from Proto-Germanic agjō, from Proto-Indo-European h₂eḱ- (“sharp”). See also Dutch egge, German Ecke, Danish æg, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish egg; also Welsh hogi (“to sharpen, hone”), Latin aciēs (“sharp”), acus (“needle”), Latvian ašs, ass (“sharp”), Ancient Greek ἀκίς (“needle”), ἀκμή (“point”), and Persian آس (“grinding stone”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA