To be undecided or uncommitted. This term dates from the early nineteenth century and conjures up the image of a person who cannot or will not decide to which side of the fence to jump. At first the term was most frequently applied to politics—that is, which candidate or party one would support—and indeed it was even so defined in John Bartlett’s 1859 Dictionary of Americanisms: “Fenceriding: The practice of ‘sitting on the fence,’ or remaining neutral in a political contest until it can be seen ‘which way the cat is going to jump.’” Subsequently the term began to be applied to any kind of hedging.