shrag

English

Etymology

Compare scrag.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʃɹæɡ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ʃɹaɡ/

Noun

shrag (plural shrags)

1. A twig cut from a tree.

Verb

shrag (third-person singular simple present shrags, present participle shragging, simple past and past participle shragged)

1. (uncommon) To cut or lop; to trim or prune (something, such as a tree).
   • 1552, Hulget:

     Twygges or boughes of trees cut of[f], or shragged, […] Shragge vnder so that the sunne maye come to the ground, […]

   • 1900 December 1, The Oxford Times, section 2:

     About 350 loads of excellent beech timber, with the felling fagots, 1,500 shragging fagots, 5 lots of small ash, 15 large ash, and 22 large elm trees, [...] will be sold by auction.

   • (Can we date this quote?) James Wright, Rain / Edward Thomas (poem), quoted in Above the River: The Complete Poems (1990), page 19:

     It is raining today in Steubenville. / Blessed be the dead whom the rain rains upon. / And damned the living who have their few days. / And blessed your thorned face, Your shragged November, / Your leaf, / Lost.

References

• “shrag”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• Joseph Wright, editor (1905), “SHRAG, v. and sb.1.”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volumes V (R–S), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• garsh