Word.ws English Dictionary

playing the wag

playing the wag is the present participle and gerund of play the wag.

Meaning of play the wag

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 […]

Questions about playing the wag

What is playing the wag the present participle and gerund of?
Playing the wag is the present participle and gerund of play the wag.

Words near playing the wag in the dictionary

  1. playing the race card
  2. playing the same tape
  3. playing the skin flute
  4. playing the something card
  5. playing the system
  6. playing the wag
  7. playing the white man
  8. playing through
  9. playing time
  10. playing times
  11. playing to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing the wag (page history and authors); 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: “playing the wag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/playing_the_wag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.