Meaning
The first small stage of something that will grow into a much larger and usually unwelcome development. Typically deployed to argue that a modest-seeming concession, precedent or change should be resisted because far greater changes will follow from it. Almost always warning or argumentative; a staple of political and editorial debate about precedent. Regional use: British English.
Origin
The metaphor is from splitting wood and stone: a wedge is driven thin end first into a small fissure, and once the point has entered, the thick end inevitably follows and forces the material apart. Idiom Origins dates the figurative expression to the mid-nineteenth century, and the OED's entry for the noun wedge illustrates 'the thin end of the wedge' from Hansard, the record of Commons debates, on 27 June 1868. The phrase was current enough by 1850 for Punch to title a John Leech cartoon 'The Thin End of the Wedge', and a 1930 Atlantic Monthly survey of proverbs noted that the Oxford English Dictionary showed it to be no older than the nineteenth century, rejecting inventive guesses at ancient classical origins. In North America the variant with 'edge' is the usual form; otherwise the phrase is chiefly British.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- small end of the wedge
- the thin end of the wedge argument
- thin edge of the wedge
Usage Examples
- Allowing adverts in the library newsletter is the thin end of the wedge; soon they will be on every noticeboard.
- Critics called the licence-fee rise the thin end of the wedge towards pay-per-view sport.
- Once the school day was extended by ten minutes, the staff saw it as the thin end of the wedge.