hag
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /hæɡ/
- 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)
- A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a wizard.
- (derogatory) An ugly old woman.
- 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
- 1646, Richard Crashaw, Steps to the Temple, “Sospetto D' Herode”, stanza 37:
- 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 man'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.
- (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
|
|
|
|
Etymology 2
Scots hag (“to cut”), from Old Norse hǫgg ‘cut, gap, breach’, derivative of hǫggva ‘to hack, hew’; compare English hew.
Noun
hag (plural hags)
Etymology 3
From Proto-Germanic *hag(g)ōnan (compare obsolete Dutch hagen ‘to torment, agonize’, Norwegian haga ‘to tire, weaken’).[3]
Verb
hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)
References
- Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, s.v. “*xaʒaz” (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149-50.
- 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.
- Guus Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, s.v. “*hagla-” (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 199.
External links
Danish
Westrobothnian
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [hɑːɣ], [hæːɣ]
- Rhymes: -áːɣ, -ǽːɣ
- (a-o merger) Rhymes: -ɑ́ːɣ, -ɒ́ːɣ
Noun
hag n (definite hagjä)
Derived terms
- ryphag