☼ Concept Map

''wag'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''wag'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

wag - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

wag (third-person singular simple present wags, present participle wagging, simple past and past participle wagged)

  • (ambitransitive) To swing from side to side, as an animal’s tail, or someone’s head to express disagreement or disbelief.
    • ✤ No discerner durst wag his tongue in censure.1
    • ✤ Every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head.2
    • ✤ Carrados wagged his head in good-humoured resignation.3
  • (UK, Australia, New Zealand, slang) To play truant from school.
    • ✤ Synonym: see Thesaurus:play truant
    • ✤ “My misfortunes all began in wagging, Sir; but what could I do, exceptin’ wag?” “Excepting what?” said Mr. Carker. “Wag, Sir. Wagging from school.” “Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?” said Mr. Carker. “Yes, Sir, that’s wagging, Sir.”4
    • ✤ They had “wagged it” from school, as they termed it, which..meant truancy in all its forms.5
    • ✤ […] she wagged English and Science just to go in his car […]6
  • (intransitive, chiefly obsolete) To go; to proceed; to move; to progress.
    • ✤ “Thus we may see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.”7
  • To move continually, especially in gossip; said of the tongue.
    • ✤ She’s a real gossip: her tongue is always wagging.
  • (intransitive, obsolete) To leave; to depart.
    • ✤ I will provoke him to ‘t, or let him wag.8
  • (intransitive, cricket, slang) Of the tail (lower order of the batting lineup): to score more runs than expected.
    • ✤ The tail wagged.

Noun

wag (plural wags)

  • An oscillating movement.
    • ✤ The wag of my dog’s tail expresses happiness.
  • A witty person.
    • ✤ Was not my Lord
      The veryer Wag o’th’ two?      9
    • ✤ But being a bit of a wag, and relishing a good joke amazingly, he concluded to have a little fun, and at the same time learn his friend a lesson concerning his negligent custom.10
    • ✤ “A nice, juicy steak,” he is said to have called for, “French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee.” It is probable that he really said “a coff of cuppee,” however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.11
    • ✤ By Wednesday it had already won art-world notoriety, and on Saturday it achieved a public visibility that any artist would envy, after a self-promoting wag tore the banana off the wall and gobbled it up.12
    • ✤ Many people can’t work from home - as one wag observed: “Well, I would, but the wife doesn’t like me laying tarmac in the front room!”13

Etymology

From Middle English waggen, probably from Old English wagian (“to wag, wave, shake”) with reinforcement from Old Norse vaga (“to wag, waddle”); both from Proto-Germanic ﹡wagōną (“to wag”). Related to English way.

The verb may be regarded as an iterative or emphatic form of waw (verb), which is often nearly synonymous; it was used, e.g., of a loose tooth. Parallel formations from the same root are the Old Norse vagga feminine, cradle (Swedish vagga, Danish vugge), Swedish vagga (“to rock a cradle”), vugge (“to rock a cradle”), Dutch wagen (“to move”), early modern German waggen (dialectal German wacken) to waver, totter. Compare waggle, verb

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /wæɡ/
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -æɡ

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]: ↩

  2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Bible Jeremiah:18–16: ↩

  3. 1914, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados: ↩

  4. 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “chapter xxii”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1901, William Sylvester Walker, Blood, i. 13: ↩

  6. 2005, Arctic Monkeys, “Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts”, in I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor: ↩

  7. c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II,]: ↩

  8. 1623, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor: ↩

  9. c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]: ↩

  10. 1855 July 1, anonymous author, The Judge’s Big Shirt ‎, Yankee-notions, →ISSN: ↩

  11. 1922, Robert C. Benchley, chapter XXII, in Love Conquers All, Henry Holt & Company, page 111: ↩

  12. 2019 December 8, Jason Farago, “A (Grudging) Defense of the ^{[2]}$, →ISSN: ↩

  13. 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 70: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •