Wedgie

Forcibly pulling a person's underpants

A male receiving a wedgie

A wedgie is the act of forcibly pulling a person's underpants upwards from the back. The act is often performed as a school prank or a form of bullying.

Wedgies are commonly featured in popular works, either as a form of low comedy or as a behaviour representative of bullying. In such works, briefs are usually the type of underpants that are worn by the victim.[1][2]

Dangers

Wedgies, especially when performed on males, can be dangerous, potentially causing testicular or scrotal damage. An incident in 2004 involving a ten-year-old boy required reattachment of a testicle to the scrotum.[3]

Variations

A female receiving a regular wedgie

As a prank or form of bullying, there are a number of variants to the normal, or traditional wedgie. It is impractical to list every variant, as the names and processes can be rather subjective; however, there are a few better-known variants of the wedgie.

  • The melvin is a variant where the victim's underpants are pulled up from the front, to cause injury, or, at least, severe pain to the victim's genitals.[4]
  • The atomic wedgie entails hoisting the waistband of the receiver's underwear up and over their head.[4]
  • The hanging wedgie is a variant in which the victim is hung by their underpants, elevated above the ground.[5]
  • The ripping wedgie involves the tearing of the victim's underpants, sometimes ripping off a portion (such as the waistband) of them, or forcibly removing the garment entirely.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ Wedgie. Archived 2007-11-18 at the Wayback Machine The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2007 via Dictionary.com.
  2. ^ No More Bullies, School Counselor Resources.
  3. ^ "Emergency operation after school prank". Yorkshire Post. 2004-12-02. Archived from the original on 2014-01-10. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
  4. ^ a b Curran, David (4 January 2007). "Gwyneth And 'The Atomic Wedgie' / The attempt to prove the actress wrong after she slams American dinner party chatter is beyond a disaster". SFGATE. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  5. ^ Stuever, Hank (2 September 2002). "At School, a Most Uncomfortable Subject". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 13 April 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
  6. ^ Harper, Shaun R. (2010). College Men and Masculinities Theory, Research, and Implications for Practice. Wiley. p. 270. ISBN 9780470448427.

External links

Look up wedgie, atomic wedgie, or melvin in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  • Media related to Wedgies at Wikimedia Commons