|
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 ‘hedge.’ 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.
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."
-from phrasefinder.com |
