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Wiktionary

hag

See also: håg, hág, Hag, and Hag.

Translingual

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Symbol

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hag

  1. (international standards) ISO 639-3 language code for Hanga.

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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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

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hag (plural hags)

  1. A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a wizard.
    • 1565, Arthur Golding (tr.), The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ouidius Nasos worke intitled Metamorphosis‎[1], London: William Seres, The Fovrthe Booke:
      And that olde hag that with a staffe his staggering lymbes dooth stay
    • 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.
  2. (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.
  3. (derogatory) An evil woman.
  4. 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
  5. 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.
  6. A hagdon or shearwater; one of various sea birds of the genus Puffinus.
  7. (obsolete) An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a person's hair.
    • 1656, Thomas White, Peripateticall Institutions‎[2], 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
  8. The fruit of the hagberry, Prunus padus.
  9. (uncountable, slang) Sleep paralysis.
Synonyms
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Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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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

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hag (plural hags)

  1. (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.]
    • 1845, Edward Fairfax (tr.), Godfrey of Bulloigne; or, The Recovery of Jerusalem: Done into English Heroical Verse‎[3], page 168:
      This said, he led me over hoults and hags; / Through thorns and bushes scant my legs I drew
  2. 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.]
    • 1662, Sir William Dugdale, The History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fenns and Marshes‎[4], page 292:
      And they likewise ordained […] that all the warp should be thrown into the Common wayes, to fill up haggs and lakes, where need was, upon a great penalty, where it should ly neer the Common rode.
    • 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
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See also
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Verb

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hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)

  1. 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

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From Middle English haggen, from Proto-Germanic *hag(g)ōnan (compare obsolete Dutch hagen (“to torment, agonize”), Norwegian haga (“to tire, weaken”)).[2]

Verb

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hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)

  1. (transitive) To harass; to weary with vexation.
    • 1692, Roger L'Estrange (tr.), Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions‎[5], page 149:
      How are Superstitious Men Hagg'd Out of their Wits and Senses, with the Fancy of Omens, Forebodings, Old Wives Tales, and Visions

References

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  1. ^ Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, s.v. “*xaʒaz” (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149-50.
  2. ^ Guus Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, s.v. “*hagla-” (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 199.

Further reading

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See also

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  • hag do (etymologically unrelated)

Anagrams

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Breton

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Conjunction

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hag

  1. and

Synonyms

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  • (before consonants or /j/) ha

Cornish

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Conjunction

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hag

  1. and

Synonyms

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  • (before consonants) ha

Danish

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Verb

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hag

  1. imperative of hage

Scots

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Etymology 1

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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

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Noun

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hag (plural hags)

  1. a notch; a pit or break
  2. a stroke of an axe or similar instrument
  3. the felling of timber; the quantity of wood felled
  4. a quagmire from which peat or turf is cut

Verb

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hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle haggin, simple past hagg'd, past participle haggit)

  1. to chop (wood); to hack; to dig out (coal etc.)
  2. (figurative) to make a hash of (something)
    • 1829, C.N. [John Wilson], “Noctes Ambrosianæ”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine‎[6], 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!
  3. to cut down trees and prepare timber

Etymology 2

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Unknown. Perhaps from Etymology 1 above, “to hack”, thus “castrate”. Compare hogg (“a young sheep”). Attested from the 19th century.

Noun

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hag (plural hags)

  1. an ox
  2. a cattleman, one who raises cattle or oxen
    Synonym: hagman

Etymology 3

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From Icelandic hagga (“to budge; to put out of place”). Attested from the 20th century.

Verb

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hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle haggin, simple past hagg'd, past participle haggit)

  1. to hinder; to impede

References

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