Awedgie is apractical joke or form ofbullying consisting of grabbing a victim’s underpants by the waistband and yanking upward to wedge said underpants in the person’s buttocks. (It can also refer to a wardrobe malfunction wherein one’s underwear is naturally wedged in someone’s buttocks.)

• “gettingbody slammed into a locker hurt, but I could handle it. More dangerous were the wedgies. Ifmemory serves, a wedgie involved ripping anotherboys’s underwear out of his pants by grabbing the rear waistband of his underwear and yanking upward. The offense typically involved two assailants and I endured many inthe ninth grade.”James Comey as quoted in his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth Lies and Leadership,[1]

•“A boy sneaks behind another boy and tugs his underwear. InNew England, this is giving someone a wedgie. The term wedgie is unknown inMinnesota where the identical act is a snuggie.” The Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore, 1975

• “I had never heard any stories of similar carryings-on anywhere else in thecollege in the 1980s. Something called the wedgie patrol was abroad in the late hours of the night on Harsbrouck First… At two or three in the morning, when most of the night owls on the floor had finally gone tosleep, the marauders insinuated their way into the rooms of other males on the floor … New male students and unpopular ones were snatched from their beds, usually sleeping only in their underwear, and hoisted by the tops of their wares until the garments shredded… In vulgar male talk among the students of the 1980s, to bust someone’s balls was usually metaphoric… The wedgie as an action collapsed themetaphor making the phrase very literal indeed.” Michael Moffat, Coming of Age in New Jersey[2]

• “The correct manly response to a wedgie attack, according to its perpetrators was to take it in goodhumor. The patrol had started the previous year, some of the sophomores said, when Harsbrouck Fourth had had lots of freshmen men on it. It had been initiated by a junior clique on the floor, guys all from the sameNew Jersey hometown who had stuck together for three years at Rutgers. They were still together in 1984. … Last year’s juniors had wedgied last year’s freshmen, and then each freshman victim had happily joined the patrol, its aficionados claimed.” Ibid.[3]

•“With millions of children scuttling back to the substandardschools we keep reading about, it’s reassuring to know the wedgie is alive and kicking.” Hank Stuever, At School A Most Uncomfortable Subject, 2002,[4]

• “Somewhere out there, freshman boys are keeping the lowest possible profile to avoid seniorfootball players who seek to wedgie them orworse, and this is a good thing in that it’s a firsthand lesson in the human condition. Sometimeslife stinks.”

Ibid,[5]

• “Summer camps are a finishing school for wedgie trainees, if all is right in the world almost no one should be able to return home with intact undamaged underwear.”

Ibid,[6]

• “Somegeeks, now fully grown, go to reunions loaded for bear. The wedgie-resentful seem to have missed the universal point of the wedgie, that it comes from a charitable place at least as much as a place of hatred and so they cannot be comforted.” Ibid.[7]

• “Eric Kassoway, 19, was reveling at a concert last year when he decided to sneak up on hisfriend, Daniel Strouss, and yank up his underwear. Apparently, it must havehurt because Strouss, 19, held agrudge for months. So much so that on the night of June 12, he drove to Kassoway’s home and shot him in the arm and the leg. Kassoway nearlydied from loss of blood.”

Jim Thorpe, Man Accused of Attempted Murder in Wedgie Case, 2002[8]

• “AnOklahoma man was sentenced late on Thursday to 30 years inprison for asphyxiating his stepfather with an atomic wedgie in December 2013.”

Heide Brandes, Oklahoma Man Gets 30 Years in Prison for Fatal Atomic Wedgie, 2015[9].

• “The nextstereotype that makes no sense to me would be all the waysbullies torment their victims in media. Like let’s start off with the most iconic, the wedgie. I’m gonna keep it abuck, if you’re a dude and someone wedgies you, and you just take that and donothing about it, maybe you deserve to get wedgied, bro. Like, if I ever have ason and he gets wedgied, I’m going to tell him he is obligated to startthrowing hands immediately. No matter how much bigger the kid is, you simply cannot take that. I personally never saw anyone get wedgied during my time in school and I think it’s because most guys know that if they try that on another dude, they’re not just gonna take that lying down like they’re somenerd in aTV show.”

Raody, Bullying Stereotypes Make No Sense, 2025,[10]

• “In theCold War world, the wedgie was also a sure way to build up sympathy for the plucky screen heroes in comedies like 1984’sRevenge of the Nerds and in 1985’sJust One of the Guys.”

Bryan Alexander, The Wedgie’s Pop Culture Pull Proves Irresistible, 2013[11]

• “Screen wedgies declined over the next 20 years perhaps due toshame over theirbullying origins or because high schoolgeeks began to rule the world.”

Bryan Alexander, The Wedgie’s Pop Culture Pull Proves Irresistible, 2013[12]

• “Well,poindexter, here’s a littlephysics lesson, undies plusgravity equal wedgie”.

Said by Vicky inThe Fairly OddParents episode Dream Goat, 2001,[13]