hag

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See also: håg, hág, Hag, and Hag.

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /hæɡ/
  • Audio (AU):(file)
  • Rhymes: -æɡ

Etymology 1

From Middle English hagge, hegge (“demon, old woman”), shortening of Old English hægtesse, hægtes (“harpy, witch”), from Proto-Germanic *hagatusjǭ (compare Saterland Frisian Häkse (“witch”), Dutch heks, German Hexe (“witch”)), compounds of (1) *hagaz (“able, skilled”) (compare Old Norse hagr (“handy, skillful”), Middle High German behac (“pleasurable”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱak- (compare Sanskrit शक्नोति (śaknóti, “he can”)),[1] and (2) *tusjǭ (“witch”) (compare dialectal Norwegian tysja (“fairy, she-elf”)).[2]

Noun

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
  2. (derogatory) An ugly old woman.
  3. A fury; a she-monster.
    • 1646, Richard Crashaw, Steps to the Temple, “Sospetto D' Herode”, 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
  4. 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.
  5. A hagdon or shearwater; one of various sea birds of the genus Puffinus.
  6. (obsolete) An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a man'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
  7. The fruit of the hagberry, Prunus padus.
  8. (slang) sleep paralysis
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
hagdon or shearwater — see shearwater
fruit of Prunus padus — see bird cherry

Etymology 2

Scots hag (“to cut”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old Norse hǫgg ‘cut, gap, breach’, derivative of hǫggva ‘to hack, hew’; compare English hew.

Noun

hag (plural hags)

  1. A small wood, or part of a wood or copse, which is marked off or enclosed for felling, or which has been felled.
    • 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 quagmire; mossy ground where peat or turf has been cut.
    • 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.

Etymology 3

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Proto-Germanic *hag(g)ōnan (compare obsolete Dutch hagen ‘to torment, agonize’, Norwegian haga ‘to tire, weaken’).[3]

Verb

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  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

  1. ^ Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, s.v. “*xaʒaz” (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149-50.
  2. ^ E. C. Polomé, “Althochdeutsch hag(a)zussa ‘Hexe’: Versuch einer neuen Etymologie”, in: R. Bergmann, ed., Althochdeutsch 2 (Wörter und Namen. Forschungsgeschichte) (1987), 1107-12.
  3. ^ Guus Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, s.v. “*hagla-” (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 199.

Anagrams

Breton

Conjunction

hag

  1. and

Synonyms

  • (before consonants or /j/) ha

Cornish

Conjunction

hag

  1. and

Synonyms

  • (before consonants) ha

Danish

Verb

hag

  1. (deprecated template usage) imperative of hage

Westrobothnian

Pronunciation

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Noun

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  1. simple fence or enclosure made of sticks, twigs or bushes
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Derived terms

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