Word.ws English Dictionary

rag week

rag week noun: an annual event in many universities where students engage in unusual activities to raise money for charity.

Noun (1)

rag week (plural rag weeks)

  1. (Ireland, UK, university slang) An annual event in many universities where students engage in unusual activities to raise money for charity.
    • This week has been the University College Rag Week. The students are given more or less a free hand all the week. They organize a series of revels culminating in a grand procession and collection this afternoon.1949 April, The Texas Outlook, volume 33, number 4, page 4
    • The only acting that looks like anything but rag week at a bad university is by Billy Hartman as a private detective.1982 January 6, B.A. Young, The Financial Times, section 1, page 9

Noun (2)

rag week (plural rag weeks)

  1. (British, slang, vulgar) The days of the month when a woman has her period.
    • I wouldn't bother trying to get off with her – it's rag week.

Synonyms of rag week

Forms of rag week

pluralrag weeks

Origin of rag week

From rag (“university students society run for charitable fundraising”) + week, possibly from the verb rag (“tease; torment; banter”).

From rag (“piece of old cloth”) + week. From the former use, by women, of rags to protect their clothing from menstrual blood.

Questions about rag week

What does rag week mean?
Rag week means an annual event in many universities where students engage in unusual activities to raise money for charity.
What part of speech is rag week?
Rag week is a noun.
What is the plural of rag week?
The plural of rag week is rag weeks.

Words near rag week in the dictionary

  1. rag races
  2. rag rug
  3. rag rugs
  4. rag the puck
  5. rag trade
  6. rag week
  7. rag weeks
  8. rag wheel
  9. rag worm
  10. rag, tag and bobtail
  11. rag-and-bone man

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rag week (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-rag week.wav.

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