hedge one's bets
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.44 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To place bets with a third party in order to offset potential losses.
verb
To reduce the risk of making a mistake by keeping one's options open.
Example Sentences
- "Whether Glass will ever become a mass-market product, and smartglasses take off, is still unclear. Google is hedging its bets, however, with its new Android Wear and smartwatch initiative which is expected to be shown off at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco later this week."
- "He prayed on Fridays with the Muslims, on Saturdays with the Jews and on Sundays with the Christians. 'Since each religion claims that it is the only true one and that the others are invalid', the king explained, 'I have decided to hedge my bets'."
- "I thought that these generals may never have intended to defect, or had at least hedged their bets enough that they could jump either way on Tuesday, depending on what course events took."
- "At this stage, Northern is hedging its bets as to the power source it wants."
- "“Some don’t really know if this is when the rapture is going to happen, but they think it’s still an important wake-up call to pay attention to. They’re hedging their bets.”"
Inflected Forms
Phrases
bet hedging