英和和英

語源 1

From 中期英語 hagge, hegge (“demon, old woman”), shortening of 古期英語 hægtesse, hægtes (“harpy, witch”), from Proto-West Germanic *hagatussjā. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Häkse (“witch”), Dutch heks, German Hexe (“witch”). Doublet of hex.

名詞

hag (plural hags)

1. A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a female wizard.
   • 1565, Arthur Golding (tr.), The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ouidius Nasos worke intitled Metamorphosis‎, London: William Seres, The Fovrthe Booke:

     And that olde hag that with a staffe his staggering lymbes dooth stay

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 11:

     Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.

2. (derogatory) An ugly old woman.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 67:

     The elder women were literally "old hags" - lean and shrivelled, and excessively ugly.

3. (derogatory) An evil woman.
   • 2017, Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, directed by Taika Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok, spoken by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson):

     I don't plan to stop drinking. But... I don't wanna forget. I can't turn away anymore. So, if I'm gonna die, well, it might as well be driving my sword through the heart of that murderous hag.

4. (US, slang, sometimes derogatory) A woman.
5. A fury; a she-monster.
   • 1646, Richard Crashaw, “Sospetto D' Herode”, in Steps to the Temple, stanza 37:

     Fourth of the cursed knot of hags is she / Or rather all the other three in one; / Hell's shop of slaughter she does oversee, / And still assist the execution

6. A hagfish; one of various eel-like fish of the family Myxinidae, allied to the lamprey, with a suctorial mouth, labial appendages, and a single pair of gill openings.
7. A hagdon or shearwater; one of various sea birds of the genus Puffinus.
8. (obsolete) An appearance of light and fire on a horse's mane or a person's hair.
   • 1656, Thomas White, Peripateticall Institutions‎, page 149:

     Flamma lambentes (or those we call Haggs) are made of Sweat or some other Vapour issuing out of the Head; a not-unusuall sight amongst us when we ride by night in the Summer time: They are extinguisht, like flames, by shaking the Horse Mains

9. The fruit of the hagberry, Prunus padus.
10. (uncountable, slang) Sleep paralysis.

同意語

• (witch or sorceress): See Thesaurus:magician
• (ugly old woman): See Thesaurus:ugly woman
• (eel-like marine fish): borer, hagfish, sleepmarken, slime eel, sucker, myxinid
• (sea bird): hagdon, haglet, shearwater
• (fruit of the hagberry): bird cherry, hackberry

派生語

語源 2

From 中期英語 hag (denoting a gap in a cliff), from Old Norse hǫgg (“cut, gap, breach”), derivative of hǫggva (“to hack, hew”). Compare English hew, Old Swedish hug (“blow, stroke”).

名詞

hag (plural hags)

1. (Northern England) A small wood, or part of a wood or copse, which is marked off or enclosed for felling, or which has been felled. [from 15th c.]
   • 1845, Edward Fairfax (tr.), Godfrey of Bulloigne; or, The Recovery of Jerusalem: Done into English Heroical Verse‎, page 168:

     This said, he led me over hoults and hags; / Through thorns and bushes scant my legs I drew

2. A marshy hollow, especially an area of peat lying lower than surrounding moorland, formed by erosion of a gully or cutting and often having steep edges. [from 16th c.]
   • 1662, Sir William Dugdale, The History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fenns and Marshes‎, page 292:

     And they likewise ordained […] that all the warp should be thrown into the Common wayes, to fill up haggs and lakes, where need was, upon a great penalty, where it should ly neer the Common rode.

   • 1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter XI, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC, page 312:

     […] upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, […]

   • 1845, The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Ayr, Bute, page 107:

     The uplands are generally mossy, resting on clay of a yellow colour, covered by moss of various depths, which often break into what are called hags, or flow-moss.

   • 1868, James Salmon, Gowodean, page 49:

     […] I had made sure to find him in the hag o' Coars-Neuk Moor, […]

   • 1882, Joseph Senior, Smithy Rhymes and Stithy Chimes, Or, the Short and Simple Annals of the Poor, page 46:

     The strongest nag that crosses th' hagg / Wi wots ta Fullod mill.

   • 1898, Charles Spence, From the Braes of the Carse: Poems and Songs by the Late Charles Spence, page 189:

     […] the murky flag / Flaps on Turftennant's rushy hag."

   • 2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 101:

     The shallow slow-running groughs fed the hag with a trickle of coppery water.

   • 2023 October 12, Mike Billett, Peat and Whisky: The Unbreakable Bond, Saraband, →ISBN:

     The winter snow has collected amongst the eroded peat hags and is being actively reshaped into deep dunes and linear ripples by the strong winds whipping across the summit ridge. In the winter light, large sandblasted granite tors, sugar-coated with ice, stand out […]

派生語

• moss-hag

参考

• grough

動詞

hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)

1. To cut or erode (as) a hag (a hollow into moorland).
   • 1874, Notes and Queries, page 253:

     hag […] is that part in mosses which is naturally or artificially cut, hollowed, hagged, or hacked; naturally by water runlets forming hollows, and artificially by, among other means, the cutting and removal of peat.

   • 1956, Scotland's Magazine, volume 52, page 39:

     Covenanters too met often on our moss-hagged moors.

   • 1990, Angélique Day, Patrick McWilliams, Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland: Co. Antrim VIII-IX, page 5:

     […] on one occasion, where the bog had been cut away, a stump was discovered which bore evident marks of having been hagged [hacked].

   • 2024, Peter Hadden, Iain Chisholm, A Very British Journey:

     Crowberry is particularly abundant on hagged peat and in cotton grass mires; it prefers drier ground, […]

語源 3

From 中期英語 haggen, from Proto-Germanic *hag(g)ōnan (compare obsolete Dutch hagen (“to torment, agonize”), Norwegian haga (“to tire, weaken”)).

動詞

hag (third-person singular simple present hags, present participle hagging, simple past and past participle hagged)

1. (transitive) To harass; to weary with vexation.
   • 1692, Roger L'Estrange (tr.), Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions‎, page 149:

     How are Superstitious Men Hagg'd Out of their Wits and Senses, with the Fancy of Omens, Forebodings, Old Wives Tales, and Visions

参照

Further reading

• Hag in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

参考

• hag do (etymologically unrelated)

アナグラム

• HGA, GAH, gha, agh, gah