hag
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Symbol
hag
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /hæɡ/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -æɡ
Etymology 1
From Middle English hagge, hegge (“demon, old woman”), shortening of Old English hægtesse, hægtes (“harpy, witch”), from Proto-West Germanic *hagatussjā.[1] Cognate with Saterland Frisian Häkse (“witch”), Dutch heks, German Hexe (“witch”). Doublet of hex.
Noun
hag (plural hags)
- A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a wizard.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 11:
- Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.
- (derogatory) An ugly old woman.
- 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 67:
- The elder women were literally "old hags" - lean and shrivelled, and excessively ugly.
- (derogatory) An evil woman.
- 2017, Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, directed by Taika Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok, spoken by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson):
- I don't plan to stop drinking. But... I don't wanna forget. I can't turn away anymore. So, if I'm gonna die, well, it might as well be driving my sword through the heart of that murderous hag.
- (US, slang) A woman over the age of 30 years.
- – What is that hag trend that is going on?
- – The trend, hagmaxxing, is when younger men pursue relationships with hags.
- A fury; a she-monster.
- 1646, Richard Crashaw, “Sospetto D' Herode”, in Steps to the Temple, stanza 37:
- Fourth of the cursed knot of hags is she / Or rather all the other three in one; / Hell's shop of slaughter she does oversee, / And still assist the execution
- A hagfish; one of various eel-like fish of the family Myxinidae, allied to the lamprey, with a suctorial mouth, labial appendages, and a single pair of gill openings.
- A hagdon or shearwater; one of various sea birds of the genus Puffinus.
- (obsolete) An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a person's hair.
- 1656, Thomas White, Peripateticall Institutions, page 149:
- Flamma lambentes (or those we call Haggs) are made of Sweat or some other Vapour issuing out of the Head; a not-unusuall sight amongst us when we ride by night in the Summer time: They are extinguisht, like flames, by shaking the Horse Mains
- The fruit of the hagberry, Prunus padus.
- (uncountable, slang) Sleep paralysis.
Synonyms
- (witch or sorceress): See Thesaurus:magician
- (ugly old woman): See Thesaurus:ugly woman
- (eel-like marine fish): borer, hagfish, sleepmarken, slime eel, sucker, myxinid
- (sea bird): hagdon, haglet, shearwater
- (fruit of the hagberry): bird cherry, hackberry
Derived terms
Translations
witch, sorceress, enchantress
|
ugly old woman
|
fury; she-monster
Myxine glutinosa
|
hagdon or shearwater — see shearwater
appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a man's hair
fruit of Prunus padus — see bird cherry
Etymology 2
From Middle English hag (denoting a gap in a cliff), from Old Norse hǫgg (“cut, gap, breach”), derivative of hǫggva (“to hack, hew”). Compare English hew, Old Swedish hug (“blow, stroke”).
Noun
hag (plural hags)
- (Northern England) A small wood, or part of a wood or copse, which is marked off or enclosed for felling, or which has been felled. [from 15th c.]
- A marshy hollow, especially an area of peat lying lower than surrounding moorland, formed by erosion of a gully or cutting and often having steep edges. [from 16th c.]
- 1836, Walter Scott, Waverley Novels, page 375:
- […] upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, […]
- 1845, The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Ayr, Bute, page 107:
- The uplands are generally mossy, resting on clay of a yellow colour, covered by moss of various depths, which often break into what are called hags, or flow-moss.
- 1868, James Salmon, Gowodean, page 49:
- […] I had made sure to find him in the hag o' Coars-Neuk Moor, […]
- 1882, Joseph Senior, Smithy Rhymes and Stithy Chimes, Or, the Short and Simple Annals of the Poor, page 46:
- The strongest nag that crosses th' hagg / Wi wots ta Fullod mill.
- 1898, Charles Spence, From the Braes of the Carse: Poems and Songs by the Late Charles Spence, page 189:
- […] the murky flag / Flaps on Turftennant's rushy hag."
- 2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 101:
- The shallow slow-running groughs fed the hag with a trickle of coppery water.
- 2023 October 12, Mike Billett, Peat and Whisky: The Unbreakable Bond, Saraband, →ISBN:
- The winter snow has collected amongst the eroded peat hags and is being actively reshaped into deep dunes and linear ripples by the strong winds whipping across the summit ridge. In the winter light, large sandblasted granite tors, sugar-coated with ice, stand out […]
Derived terms
See also
Verb
hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)
- To cut or erode (as) a hag (a hollow into moorland).
- 1874, Notes and Queries, page 253:
- hag […] is that part in mosses which is naturally or artificially cut, hollowed, hagged, or hacked; naturally by water runlets forming hollows, and artificially by, among other means, the cutting and removal of peat.
- 1956, Scotland's Magazine, volume 52, page 39:
- Covenanters too met often on our moss-hagged moors.
- 1990, Angélique Day, Patrick McWilliams, Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland: Co. Antrim VIII-IX, page 5:
- […] on one occasion, where the bog had been cut away, a stump was discovered which bore evident marks of having been hagged [hacked].
- 2024, Peter Hadden, Iain Chisholm, A Very British Journey:
- Crowberry is particularly abundant on hagged peat and in cotton grass mires; it prefers drier ground, […]
Etymology 3
From Middle English haggen, from Proto-Germanic *hag(g)ōnan (compare obsolete Dutch hagen (“to torment, agonize”), Norwegian haga (“to tire, weaken”)).[2]
Verb
hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)
- (transitive) To harass; to weary with vexation.
References
Further reading
See also
- hag do (etymologically unrelated)
Anagrams
Verb
hag
- imperative of hage
Etymology 1
From Middle English haggen (“to hack, chop, cut”), from Old Norse hǫggva (“to hew”). Compare English hag, above. Noun attested from the 14th century in Older Scots, with the verb from c. 1400.
Alternative forms
Noun
hag (plural hags)
Verb
hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle haggin, simple past hagg'd, past participle haggit)
- to chop (wood); to hack; to dig out (coal etc.)
- (figurative) to make a hash of (something)
- 1829, C.N. [John Wilson], “Noctes Ambrosianæ”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, page 789:
- […] and the rawzor haggit like a saw—Trumbull o’ Selkirk makes good rawzors, but the weans are unco fond of playing wi’ mine, puir things—Od keep us!
- when the razor is hacked like a saw-tooth—Trumbull from Selkirk makes good razors, but the children are uncommonly fond of playing with mine, the poor things—then God help us!
- to cut down trees and prepare timber
Etymology 2
Unknown. Perhaps from Etymology 1 above, “to hack”, thus “castrate”. Compare hogg (“a young sheep”). Attested from the 19th century.
Noun
hag (plural hags)
Etymology 3
From Icelandic hagga (“to budge; to put out of place”). Attested from the 20th century.
Verb
hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle haggin, simple past hagg'd, past participle haggit)
References
- “hag, v1, n1.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.
- “hag, n.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.
- “hag, v.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.
- “haggen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
- “hag, n2.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.
- “hag, v2.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.