Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An old woman considered ugly or frightful.
- n. A witch; a sorceress.
- n. Obsolete A female demon.
- n. A hagfish.
- n. Chiefly British A boggy area; a quagmire.
- n. Chiefly British A spot in boggy land that is softer or more solid than the surrounding area.
- n. Chiefly British A cutting in a peat bog.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A witch; a sorceress; an enchantress; very rarely, a male witch; wizard; magician.
- n. A repulsive, vicious, or malicious old woman.
- n. A cyclostomous or marsipobranchiate fish, Myxine glutinosa, or glutinous hag, related to the lamprey, type of the family Myxinidæ and suborder Hyperotreta. See these technical words. The hag resembles an eel in some respects, is a foot or more long, has a cirrous sucking mouth, a strong palatal tooth, pouched gills, and is parasitic. Also hagfish, slime-eel.
- n. A white mist; phosphoric light; an appearance of light or fire on horses' manes or men's hair.
- To vex; harass; torment.
- n. A small wood or wooded inclosure.
- To cut; hack; chop; hew: same as hack.
- To haggle or dispute.
- n. A stroke with an ax or a knife; a notch; a cut; a hack.
- n. A certain part of a wood intended to be cut.
- n. One cutting or felling of a certain quantity of wood; also, the wood so cut.
- n. Branches lopped off for firewood; brushwood.
- n. A quagmire or pit in mossy ground; any broken ground in a bog.
- n. a rabble; rag, tag, and bobtail.
- n. A bachelor; a fellow; a man.
- n. A kind of boat. See the quotation.
- n. A bird: same as hagden.
Wiktionary
- n. A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; also, a wizard.
- n. An ugly old woman.
- n. A fury; a she-monster.
- n. An eel-like marine marsipobranch (Myxine glutinosa), allied to the lamprey. It has a suctorial mouth, with labial appendages, and a single pair of gill openings. It is the type of the order Hyperotreti. Called also hagfish, borer, slime eel, sucker, and sleepmarken.
- n. The hagdon or shearwater.
- n. An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a man's hair.
- n. The fruit of the hagberry.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; also, a wizard.
- n. An ugly old woman.
- n. A fury; a she-monster.
- n. An eel-like marine marsipobranch (Myxine glutinosa), allied to the lamprey. It has a suctorial mouth, with labial appendages, and a single pair of gill openings. It is the type of the order Hyperotreta. Called also
hagfish ,borer ,slime eel ,sucker , andsleepmarken . - n. The hagdon or shearwater.
- n. An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a man's hair.
- v. To harass; to weary with vexation.
- n. A small wood, or part of a wood or copse, which is marked off or inclosed for felling, or which has been felled.
- n. A quagmire; mossy ground where peat or turf has been cut.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an ugly evil-looking old woman
- n. eellike cyclostome having a tongue with horny teeth in a round mouth surrounded by eight tentacles; feeds on dead or trapped fishes by boring into their bodies
Etymologies
- Middle English hagge, perhaps short for Old English hægtesse, witch.Middle English, gap, chasm, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse högg; see kau- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“To what you call the hag-ridden moron jittering out of sight in your mind, so many things equate to a threat to survival.”
“Margaret starts out as a many pleasing girl in France as good as ends up as a scolding, infamous aged hag; is which a story, or is it unequivocally dual plays?”
“Jan from boca raton ..... are you mad the hag is done? ostriches burying our heads in the sand”
“A fag hag is a slang term for a woman who either associates mostly or exclusively with homosexual men, or is best or good friends to a gay man or men.”
“The term yamanba comes from a mountain hag, known as Yama-uba, whom the fashion is thought to resemble.”
“_ -- Stones with holes through them were commonly called hag-stones, and were often attached to the key of the stable door to prevent witches riding the horses.”
“Don’t make judgments about the particulars—Oh my God, I just used the word hag—simply feel the direct sensations as they arise in your body.”
“Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense -- 'hag' -- but it is not so used here.”
“In Sussex, fairy rings were called hag tracks', while in Devon it was believed that fairies would catch young horses in the night and ride them round in circles.”
“Her eyes haunted me; they had what is called a hag-ridden look.”
hernesheir A bird, a boat, a fish, a bachelor, except when it is a peat hag. Nov 1, 2011
hernesheir American Heritage Dictionary, def. 6: "Chiefly British A spot in boggy land that is softer or more solid than the surrounding area." Well which is it, softer, or more solid? Mar 17, 2011
chained_bear "But as Garfinkel observes, the Hebrew word hag means both 'festival' and to 'go in a circle'—suggesting that the primordial form of many traditional Jewish festivals was the circle dance."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 31 Mar 12, 2009