hedgehogging

Verb

hedgehog (third-person singular simple present hedgehogs, present participle hedgehogging, simple past and past participle hedgehogged)

1. To make use of a hedgehog barricade as a defensive maneuver.
   • Hedgehogging means — let us call a spade a spade — that we're were encircled: It's something that has been forced upon us, a predicament from which we ought to try to escape as fast as possible.1966, Theodor Plievier, Stalingrad, page 43
2. To array with spiky projections like the quills of a hedgehog.
   • All around were styrofoam cups hedgehogged with butts, and the threebar electric heater was encrusted with bits of charcoaled tobacco and frazzled stands of hair where people had stooped down to spark up.2008, Antonia Quirke, Choking on Marlon Brando, →ISBN
3. (ambitransitive) To curl up into a defensive ball.
   • You try for his head, but he's hedgehogged round now, elbows beside his ears and you can't get him.2008, A.L. Kennedy, Day, →ISBN, page 229

See all 15 meanings of hedgehog