cornered

[kawr-nerd]

adjective

1. having corners (usually used in combination).

   a six-cornered room.

2. having a given number of positions; sided (usually used in combination).

   a four-cornered debate.

3. forced into an awkward, embarrassing, or inescapable position.

   a cornered debater; a cornered fox.

Other Word Forms

• uncornered adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of cornered¹

Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; corner, -ed ³

Example Sentences

"Overall we are seeing a European Union that has been cornered," said Li Shuo, from the Asia Society, a long-time observer of climate politics.

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Dusty is played by Josh O’Connor, who lately has cornered the market on sensitive, passive outsiders.

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Many experts said the outage showed how reliant tech is on Amazon's dominance in the cloud computing sector, as a market largely cornered by AWS and Microsoft Azure.

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Hologic has cornered the market for women’s health products and related diagnostic tools.

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His edge is a bit like a concealed weapon, but it seems unlikely he’ll be cornered by his own warped sensibility.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal