jag
nounverbnounattested in dialogue
- //d͡ʒæɡ//
A sharp projection.
noun
- 1
A sharp projection.
garments thus beset with long jagges and pursles
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still / The Moon was at its side; / Like waters shot from some high crag, / The lightning fell with never a jag, / A river steep and wide.
The especial beauty of London is the Thames, and the Thames is so wonderful because the mist is always changing its shapes and colours, always making its light mysterious, and building palaces of cloud out of mere Parliament Houses with their jags and turrets.
Even if you hadn’t been drowned, you would have been smashed to pieces by the terrible weight of water against the countless jags of rock.
- 2
A part broken off; a fragment.
some Jaggs will ſuffice to be recited
I depart as air .... I shake my white locks at the runway sun, / I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.
- 3
A flap, a tear in a clothing
- 4
A cleft or division.
- 5
A medical injection, a jab.
- 6
A thorn from a bush (see jaggerbush).
- 7
Variant of jagoffEllipsis of jagoff (“an irritating, inept, or repugnant person”).
Etymology
The noun is from late Middle English jagge, from Old English giagga, giacga. The ultimate origin could be sound-symbolic of sudden movement, compare with jam, rag and Middle English dag, of which jag may be a palatalised variant. The verb is from jaggen, from Old English giacgian.
verb
- 1
To cut unevenly.
On the Friday […] we had been playing tennis and in some way Geoffrey jagged a finger nail so that it kept catching in his things whenever he touched it.
- 2
To pierce with a sharp object.
- 3
To tease.
noun
- 1
Enough liquor to make a person noticeably drunk; a skinful.
- 2
A binge or period of overindulgence; a spree.
Consider, the pessimists argue, the vast number of plays which it is only possible to sit through with the assistance of what Ella Wheeler Wilcox would call a mild jag.
‘People who spend their money for second-hand sex jags are as nervous as dowagers who can't find the rest-room.’
He eventually finished the novel after a 10-day writing jag.
- 3
A fit, spell, outburst.
Of course she did not lose her sense of humor (not necessarily to be confused with her laughing fits, which are crying jags turned inside out according to the shrinks).
Miles had a cold, he always had a cold, it went unnoticed, went without saying, he had coughing jags and slightly woozy eyes, completely unremarked by people who knew him […]
- 4
A one-horse cart load, or, in modern times, a truck load, of hay or wood.
- 5
archaicA leather bag or wallet; (in the plural) saddlebags.
Etymology
Circa 1597; originally "load of broom or furze", variant of British English dialectal chag (“tree branch; branch of broom or furze”), from Old English ċeacga (“broom, furze”), from Proto-Germanic *kagô (compare dialectal German Kag (“stump, cabbage, stalk”), Swedish dialect kage (“stumps”), Norwegian dialect kage (“low bush”), of unknown origin.
Forms
- plural
- jags
- past tense
- jagged
- past participle
- jagged
- present participle
- jagging
- third person singular
- jags