tap vs wedge

tap

noun
  • A piece of leather fastened upon the bottom of a boot or shoe in repairing or renewing the sole or heel. 

  • A device used to dispense liquids. 

  • A device used to listen in secretly on telephone calls. 

  • A consonant sound made by a single muscle contraction, such as the sound [ɾ] in the standard American English pronunciation of body. 

  • An interception of communication by authority. 

  • A tapering cylindrical pin or peg used to stop the vent in a cask. 

  • A device used to cut an internal screw thread. (External screw threads are cut with a die.) 

  • The situation where a borrowing government authority issues bonds over a period of time, usually at a fixed price, with volumes sold on a particular day dependent on market conditions. 

  • A gentle or slight blow; a light rap; a pat. 

  • A place where liquor is drawn for drinking. 

  • A signal, by drum or trumpet, for extinguishing all lights in soldiers' quarters and retiring to bed; usually given about a quarter of an hour after tattoo. 

  • Liquor drawn through a tap; hence, a certain kind or quality of liquor. 

  • A procedure that removes fluid from a body cavity. 

  • An Indian malarial fever. 

  • The act of touching a touch screen. 

  • A connection made to an electrical or fluid conductor without breaking it. 

verb
  • To operate an electronic device (e.g. a mobile phone) by tapping a specific place on its (capacitive or other) touch screen. 

  • To draw off liquid from a vessel. 

  • To drain off fluid by paracentesis. 

  • To have sexual intercourse with. 

  • To put a new sole or heel on. 

  • To place a listening or recording device on a telephone or wired connection. 

  • To designate for some duty or for membership, as in 'a tap on the shoulder'. 

  • To touch one's finger, foot, or other body parts on a surface (usually) repeatedly. 

  • To deplete, especially of a liquid via a tap; to tap out. 

  • To furnish with taps. 

  • To exploit. 

  • To cadge, borrow or beg. 

  • To turn or flip a card or playing piece to remind players that it has already been used that turn (by analogy to "tapping," in the sense of drawing on to the point of temporary exhaustion, the resources or abilities represented by the card). 

  • To submit to an opponent by tapping one's hand repeatedly. 

  • To strike lightly. 

  • To advance someone for a post or job, or for membership of a club. 

  • To cut an internal screw thread. 

  • To make a sharp noise. 

  • To intercept a communication without authority. 

  • To force (an opponent) to submit. 

wedge

noun
  • One of a pair of wedge-heeled shoes. 

  • A háček. 

  • The person whose name stands lowest on the list of the classical tripos. 

  • A piece (of food, metal, wood etc.) having this shape. 

  • A five-sided polyhedron with a rectangular base, two rectangular or trapezoidal sides meeting in an edge, and two triangular ends. 

  • A barometric ridge; an elongated region of high atmospheric pressure between two low-pressure areas. 

  • A quantity of money. 

  • The IPA character ʌ, which denotes an open-mid back unrounded vowel. 

  • A wedge tornado. 

  • A voussoir, one of the wedge-shaped blocks forming an arch or vault. 

  • One of the basic elements that make up cuneiform writing, a single triangular impression made with the corner of a reed stylus. 

  • A group of geese, swans, or other birds when they are in flight in a V formation. 

  • A sandwich made on a long, cylindrical roll. 

  • A type of iron club used for short, high trajectories. 

  • The symbol ∧, denoting a meet (infimum) operation or logical conjunction. 

  • One of the simple machines; a piece of material, such as metal or wood, thick at one edge and tapered to a thin edge at the other for insertion in a narrow crevice, used for splitting, tightening, securing, or levering. 

  • A hairpin, an elongated horizontal V-shaped sign indicating a crescendo or decrescendo. 

  • Something that creates a division, gap or distance between things. 

  • A market trend characterized by a contracting range in prices coupled with an upward trend in prices (a rising wedge) or a downward trend in prices (a falling wedge). 

verb
  • To support or secure using a wedge. 

  • To force or drive with a wedge. 

  • Of a computer program or system: to get stuck in an unresponsive state. 

  • To pack (people or animals) together tightly into a mass. 

  • To cleave with a wedge. 

  • To shape into a wedge. 

  • To force into a narrow gap. 

  • To work wet clay by cutting or kneading for the purpose of homogenizing the mass and expelling air bubbles. 

How often have the words tap and wedge occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )