hedge one's bets

present singular third person hedges one's bets · participle present hedging one's bets · participle past hedged one's bets · past hedged one's bets

1. To place bets with a third party in order to offset potential losses.

   Synonyms: lay off

2. idiomaticTo reduce the risk of making a mistake by keeping one's options open.

   At this stage, Northern is hedging its bets as to the power source it wants.

   2023 August 23, Mel Holley, “Network News: Northern begins the search for DMU replacements...”, in RAIL, number 990, page 6

   4 more examples

   Whether Glass will ever become a mass-market product, and smartglasses take off, is still unclear. Google is hedging its bets, however, with its new Android Wear and smartwatch initiative which is expected to be shown off at Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco later this week.

   2014 June 24, “Google Glass go on sale in the UK for £1,000”, in The Guardian

   He prayed on Fridays with the Muslims, on Saturdays with the Jews and on Sundays with the Christians. 'Since each religion claims that it is the only true one and that the others are invalid', the king explained, 'I have decided to hedge my bets'.

   2002, Tim Mackintosh-Smith translating Ahmad ibn Rustah, Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah

   I thought that these generals may never have intended to defect, or had at least hedged their bets enough that they could jump either way on Tuesday, depending on what course events took.

   2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 281

   “Some don’t really know if this is when the rapture is going to happen, but they think it’s still an important wake-up call to pay attention to. They’re hedging their bets.”

   2025 September 23, Alaina Demopoulos, quoting Sara Reinis, “‘It’s prime time for rapture talk’: TikTok gets its first ‘world is ending’ moment”, in The Guardian, →ISSN