fagging

Verb

fag (third-person singular simple present fags, present participle fagging, simple past and past participle fagged)

1. (archaic, colloquial, transitive) To make exhausted, tired out.
2. (archaic, colloquial, intransitive) To droop; to tire.
   • a. 1829, G. Mackenzie, Lives, quoted in 1829, "Fag", entry in The London Encyclopaedia: Or, Universal Dictionary, Volume 9, page 12,
     Creighton with-held his force 'till the Italian began to fag, and then brought him to the ground.
3. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, historical, intransitive) (of a younger student) To act as a servant for senior students in many British boarding schools. To be the servant in fagging.
4. (Ireland, UK, colloquial, historical, transitive) To have (a younger student) act as a servant in this way, in fagging.
   • It is everywhere observed that a liberated slave is apt to make a merciless master, and that boys who have been cruelly fagged at school are cruel faggers.1887, Francis Bacon, Richard Whately, Essays, page 63
5. (Ireland, UK, archaic, intransitive) To work hard, especially on menial chores.
   • This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.1847, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 1, in Jane Eyre, HTML edition

See all 15 meanings of fag