verge

Meanings

Noun

• A rod or staff of office, e.g. of a verger.
• An edge or border.
• The phallus.
• An old measure of land: a virgate or yardland.
• A circumference; a circle; a ring.
• The shaft of a column, or a small ornamental shaft.
• The eaves or edge of the roof that projects over the gable of a roof.
• The spindle of a watch balance, especially one with pallets, as in the old vertical escapement.

Verb

• To be or come very close; to border; to approach.
• To bend or incline; to tend downward; to slope.

Related

Similar words

• see list at tree lawn

Origin

• Borrowed from Middle French verge ("rod or wand of office"), hence "scope, territory dominated", from Latin virga ("shoot, rod stick"), of unknown origin. Earliest attested sense in English is now-obsolete meaning "male member, penis" (c.1400). Modern sense is from the notion of 'within the verge' (1509, also as Anglo-Norman dedeinz la verge), i.e. "subject to the Lord High Steward's authority" (as symbolized by the rod of office), originally a 12-mile radius round the royal court, which sense shifted to "the outermost edge of an expanse or area." virga.
• Borrowed from Latin vergō ("to bend, turn, tend toward, incline"), from Proto-Indo-European *werg- ("to turn"), from a root *wer- (compare versus); strongly influenced by the above noun.