Word.ws English Dictionary

play the wag

play the wag verb: to play truant (be absent from school without permission).

Verb

play the wag (third-person singular simple present plays the wag, present participle playing the wag, simple past and past participle played the wag)

  1. (UK, dated, idiomatic, slang) To play truant (be absent from school without permission).
    • […] that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait upon a boy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a sunny afternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.1889, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat […]

Synonyms of play the wag

Forms of play the wag

third-person singular presentplays the wag
present participleplaying the wag
past participleplayed the wag
pastplayed the wag

Questions about play the wag

What does play the wag mean?
Play the wag means to play truant (be absent from school without permission).
What part of speech is play the wag?
Play the wag is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the wag?
The past tense of play the wag is played the wag.

Words near play the wag in the dictionary

  1. play the same tape
  2. play the skin flute
  3. play the something card
  4. play the system
  5. play the victim card
  6. play the wag
  7. play the white man
  8. play therapies
  9. play therapy
  10. play through
  11. play to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the wag (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.

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