Word.ws English Dictionary

hag

UK/hæɡ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/haɡ/

hag noun: a witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a female wizard. Also the acronym of Hot ass grandma.

Noun (1)

hag (plural hags)

  1. A witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a female wizard.
    • And that olde hag that with a staffe his staggering lymbes dooth stay1565, Arthur Golding (tr.), The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ouidius Nasos worke intitled Metamorphosis, London: William Seres, The Fovrthe Booke
    • 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.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
    Synonyms:
    magician
  2. (derogatory) An ugly old woman.
    • The elder women were literally "old hags" - lean and shrivelled, and excessively ugly.1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 67
    • Two girls lived in the tepee with the old hag and her warrior son.1950, Dorothy M. Johnson, A Man Called Horse; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 173
    Synonyms:
    ugly woman
  3. (derogatory) An evil woman.
    • 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.2017, Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, directed by Taika Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok, spoken by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson)
  4. (US, derogatory, slang, sometimes) A woman.
  5. A fury; a she-monster.
    • 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 execution1646, Richard Crashaw, “Sospetto D' Herode”, in Steps to the Temple, stanza 37
  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.
    • 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 Mains1656, Thomas White, Peripateticall Institutions, page 149
  9. The fruit of the hagberry, Prunus padus.
  10. (slang, uncountable) Sleep paralysis.

Noun (2)

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.
    • This said, he led me over hoults and hags; / Through thorns and bushes scant my legs I drew1845, Edward Fairfax (tr.), Godfrey of Bulloigne; or, The Recovery of Jerusalem: Done into English Heroical Verse, page 168
  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.
    • 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.1662, Sir William Dugdale, The History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fenns and Marshes, page 292
    • […] upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, […]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.]...

Verb (1)

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).
    • 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.1874, Notes and Queries, page 253
    • Covenanters too met often on our moss-hagged moors.1956, Scotland's Magazine, volume 52, page 39

Verb (2)

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

  1. (transitive) To harass; to weary with vexation.
    • How are Superstitious Men Hagg'd Out of their Wits and Senses, with the Fancy of Omens, Forebodings, Old Wives Tales, and Visions1692, Roger L'Estrange (tr.), Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions, page 149

Also used as

hag is also the acronym of Hot ass grandma.

hag meaning in Arabic and Vietnamese

hag in Arabic

ugly old woman
شَمْطَاء šamṭāʔ

hag in Vietnamese

ugly old woman
con mẹ

Examples of hag in a sentence

  • 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.1845, The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Ayr, Bute, page 107:
  • […] I had made sure to find him in the hag o' Coars-Neuk Moor, […]1868, James Salmon, Gowodean, page 49:
  • The strongest nag that crosses th' hagg / Wi wots ta Fullod mill.1882, Joseph Senior, Smithy Rhymes and Stithy Chimes, Or, the Short and Simple Annals of the Poor, page 46:
  • […] the murky flag / Flaps on Turftennant's rushy hag."1898, Charles Spence, From the Braes of the Carse: Poems and Songs by the Late Charles Spence, page 189:

All 19 example sentences with hag

Synonyms of hag

3 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of hag

Forms of hag

Noun
pluralhags
Verb
third-person singular presenthags
present participlehagging
past participlehagged
pasthagged

Plural of hag: hags

Origin of hag

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

From Middle English 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”).

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

Words formed from hag

Phrases with hag

Words that rhyme with hag

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hag

What does hag mean?
Hag means a witch, sorceress, or enchantress; a female wizard.
What is hag in Arabic?
Hag in Arabic is شَمْطَاء (šamṭāʔ). See Hag meaning in Arabic.
How do you use hag in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is hag?
Hag can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce hag?
Hag is pronounced /hæɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of hag?
The plural of hag is hags.

Words near hag in the dictionary

  1. haftorot
  2. haftoroth
  3. hafts
  4. hafu
  5. hafus
  6. hag
  7. hag do
  8. hag dos
  9. hag fish
  10. hag fishes
  11. hag moth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hag (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hag.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.