behedge

Verb

behedge (third-person singular simple present behedges, present participle behedging, simple past and past participle behedged)

1. (transitive) To hedge about; surround with or as with a hedge.
   • [...] so that, though he had neither fixed flag not fixed father to cloud his thought and behedge his landscape, he could still, he used to say, share in the gush about ancestry.1932, Thomas Burke, City of encounters: a London divertissement

   Synonyms:

   betine, border, enclose, hedge

2. (transitive) To determine the boundary or limit of; define.
   • Having been spawned in a royal bed — perchance the same in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive her paramours — he becomes the most powerful of princes — haloed with "that divinity which doth behedge a king" — and all [...]1905, William Cowper Brann, J.D. Shaw, Brann the iconoclast

   Synonyms:

   bound, define

3. (transitive) To surround; beset; plague; hinder.
   • Reflection finds the circumstance unfortunate that most of the agreeable actions of life are either forbidden or else deplorably behedged with restrictions.1927, James Branch Cabell, Straws and Prayer-Books
   • [...] nor is it necessary to do more than call attention to a few indisputable facts to prove that the public policy he recommends would do little or nothing to ameliorate the hard conditions that behedge the toiling millions.2005, William Cowper Brann, The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast Volume Three

   Synonyms:

   impede, blunt, crimp, foreclose, delay, difficult, diminish, forestay, retroact, interfere

4. (transitive) To straiten; restrict; constrain; limit.
   • The remaining heirs are therefore not to be defeated by any of the restrictions that behedge the remedies available to the third-party beneficiary of a contract; [...]1968, Edward Weldon Bailey, Texas law of wills

   Synonyms:

   curtail, restrain, guard, govern, smother, bind, chasten, choke back, check, inhibit