Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Clay ground and kneaded with water into a plastic consistency for forming bricks or pottery.
  • noun A machine for grinding and mixing clay.
  • transitive verb To work or knead (clay) with water.
  • transitive verb To fill in with clay or mortar.
  • transitive verb To make soundproof by covering or packing with clay, mortar, sawdust, or felt.
  • noun A footprint, track, or trail, especially of an animal; a pugmark.
  • noun A dog of a small sturdy breed developed in China, having a short muzzle, wrinkled face, short smooth coat, and tightly curled tail.
  • noun A pug nose.
  • noun A fighter, especially a boxer.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pug-nose; the form or turn of a pug-nose: as, a decided pug.
  • noun Clay ground and worked or kneaded with water, and sometimes with other substances, into consistency for molding, as into bricks, etc.
  • noun A pug-mill.
  • noun An elf; fairy; goblin; sprite: same as puck, 1.
  • noun A monkey.
  • noun A fox.
  • noun A dwarf variety of dog; a pug-dog.
  • noun A term of familiarity or endearment, like duck, etc.
  • noun A three-year-old salmon.
  • noun One of certain small geometrid moths: an English collectors' name. The netted pug is Eupithecia venosata; the foxglovepug is E. pulchellata.
  • noun A short cloak worn by ladies about the middle of the eighteenth century.
  • To thrust; strike. [Prov. Eng.]
  • In building: To tamp with clay, or stop with puddle; clay.
  • To line (spaces between floor-joists) or cover (partition-walls) with coarse mortar, felt, sawdust, or any other material to impede the passage of sound; deaden; deafen.
  • In pottery-and brick-manuf., to grind, as clay, with water in order to render it plastic.
  • noun The print of a foot; a footmark. See puggi.
  • noun Chaff; refuse of grain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To mix and stir when wet, as clay for bricks, pottery, etc.
  • transitive verb To fill or stop with clay by tamping; to fill in or spread with mortar, as a floor or partition, for the purpose of deadening sound. See Pugging, 2.
  • noun India A footprint; a track; as of a boar.
  • noun Tempered clay; clay moistened and worked so as to be plastic.
  • noun A pug mill.
  • noun a kind of mill for grinding and mixing clay, either for brickmaking or the fine arts; a clay mill. It consists essentially of an upright shaft armed with projecting knives, which is caused to revolve in a hollow cylinder, tub, or vat, in which the clay is placed.
  • noun obsolete An elf, or a hobgoblin; also same as puck.
  • noun colloq. A name for a monkey.
  • noun Prov. Eng. A name for a fox.
  • noun obsolete An intimate; a crony; a dear one.
  • noun obsolete Chaff; the refuse of grain.
  • noun obsolete A prostitute.
  • noun (Zoöl.) One of a small breed of pet dogs having a short nose and head; a pug dog.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any geometrid moth of the genus Eupithecia.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The footprint of an animal. (Also pugmark) (From the Hindi for 'foot', related to Sanskrit 'padh' and Greek 'ped')
  • noun Any compressed clay-like material mixed and worked into a soft, plastic condition for making bricks, pottery or for paving. (Also pug soil)
  • noun obsolete, slang A nickname for a pugilist or boxer.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun small compact smooth-coated breed of Asiatic origin having a tightly curled tail and broad flat wrinkled muzzle

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Hindi pag, probably from Sanskrit padakam, footstep, foot, from padam; see ped- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for pugilist, boxer.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • "However, the name, as applied to the stretch of dirt and pug and gravel that the Goodyears had put through the woods and over the bogland to the little outport where my grandmother had been born, was not altogether inappropriate."

    --David Macfarlane, The Danger Tree, 221

    May 13, 2008

  • A pug on the wrong side of town.

    November 26, 2008

  • pug-fugly, anyone?

    November 26, 2008

  • Just Say NO to Pugs!

    November 26, 2008

  • may be an abbreviated form of puggaree, a hat band

    June 26, 2009

  • Nice link bilby!! The poor thing looks like it's eyes are going to fall out.

    July 23, 2009

  • Well, he's scared. Can you blame him?

    I like pugs. Pug, pug, pug. They're cuuude!

    July 23, 2009

  • Apparantly they sneeze a lot. I have never owned a dog, let alone a pug, and I can't picture them sneezing. :-)

    July 24, 2009

  • "Cattle pee and poop around water supplies, under shade trees, and outside the gates of their enclosures. They do not evenly distribute their waste. Not even remotely. The field is thus not properly fertilized. The main way to mitigate this problem is to pack cattle with greater density, thus improving nutrient distribution. This decision, however, quickly leads to what called pugging---the transformation of soil around watering spots into muck that can be 18 inches thick---and overgrazing in the center of the pastures. Pugging and overgrazing counteract the benefits of nutrient distribution because the soil is less able to absorb the waste. The rotational grazer is thereby trapped."

    - James McWilliams, The Unequal Distribution of Waste, james-mcwilliams.com, 27 August 2012.

    August 27, 2012

  • In John Milesius any man may reade

    Of divels in Sarmatia honored

    Call'd Kottri or Kibaldi ; such as wee

    Pugs and hobgoblins call. Their dwellings bee

    In corners of old houses least frequented,

    Or beneath stacks of wood ; and these convented

    Make fearfull noise in buttries and in dairies,

    Robin good-fellowes some, some call them fairies.

    - Thomas Heywood, 'Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells', 1635

    June 25, 2022