wug

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: wŭg, IPA^(key): /wʌɡ/
• Rhymes: -ʌɡ

Etymology 1

One of Gleason's hand-drawn panels from the original Wug Test

Pseudoword, coined by American psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason in the 1950s as a word that children taking the test would not have heard before.

Noun

wug (plural chiefly wugs; see usage notes)

1. (linguistics) An imaginary creature resembling a bird, used in the Wug Test to investigate the acquisition of the plural form in English-speaking children.

Usage notes

• In the original result of the Wug Test, children consistently produced wugs for the plural. However, plurals other than the standard wugs are sometimes used humorously, including wuggen (by analogy with oxen), weeg, and wuggi (by analogy with Latinate plurals).
• Other humorous forms include weese, wüge, nyug or wugim which are formed with the plural markers of other languages.

Derived terms

• Wug Test
• wug word

Etymology 2

Blend of worm +‎ bug.

Noun

wug (plural wugs)

1. (anthropology) In folk taxonomy, a creature with worm or insect features; colloquially, a bug or creepy-crawly.