shag

pronunciation

How to pronounce shag in British English: UK [ʃæg] word uk audio image

How to pronounce shag in American English: US [ʃæɡ] word us audio image

Noun:

a strong coarse tobacco that has been shredded
a matted tangle of hair or fiber
a fabric with long coarse nap
slang terms for sexual intercourse
a lively dance step consisting of hopping on each foot in turn
Verb:

dance the shag

Word Origin

shag: shag: [OE] Shag originally meant ‘rough untidy hair’, a sense now more familiar in its derivative shaggy [16]. Related Old Norse forms such as skegg ‘beard’, skagi ‘promontory’, and skaga ‘project’ suggest that its underlying meaning is ‘something that sticks out’. The bird-name shag, which denotes a relative of the cormorant and was first recorded in the 16th century, may be an allusion to the bird’s shaggy crest. The origins of the verb shag ‘copulate with’, which dates from the late 18th century, are not known, although it may be distantly related to shake.

shag (n.): 1590s, "cloth having a velvet nap on one side," perhaps from Old English sceacga "rough matted hair or wool," from Proto-Germanic *skagjan (cognates: Old Norse skegg, Swedish skägg "beard"), perhaps related to Old High German scahho "promontory," Old Norse skagi "a cape, headland," with a connecting sense of "jutting out, projecting." But the word appears to be missing in Middle English. Of tobacco, "cut in fine shreds," it is recorded from 1789; of carpets, rugs, etc., from 1946.

shag (v.1): "copulate with," 1788, probably from obsolete verb shag (late 14c.) "to shake, waggle," which probably is connected to shake (v.). And þe boot, amydde þe water, was shaggid. [Wyclif] Compare shake it in U.S. blues slang from 1920s, ostensibly with reference to dancing. But compare shag (v.), used from 1610s in a sense "to roughen or make shaggy." Also the name of a dance popular in U.S. 1930s and '40s. Related: Shagged; shagging.

shag (v.2): in baseball, "to go after and catch" (fly balls), by 1913, of uncertain origin. Century Dictionary has it as a secondary sense of a shag (v.) "to rove about as a stroller or beggar" (1851), which is perhaps from shack (n.) "disreputable fellow" (1680s), short for shake-rag, an old term for a beggar.