Word.ws English Dictionary

shag-boy

shag-boy noun: a ghost or goblin.

Noun

shag-boy (plural shag-boys)

  1. A ghost or goblin.
    • Ghosts, bogies, and the supernatural generally have utterly vanished from this commonplace district before schools and newspapers. Even an old lady more than ninety years old said to us, "Fairies and shag-boys! lasses are often skeart at them, but I never saw none, though I have passed many a time...1882 August, “From the Heart of the Wolds”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume 46, number 2, page 232
    Synonyms:
    shag-foal

Synonyms of shag-boy

  • shag-foal

Forms of shag-boy

pluralshag-boys

Origin of shag-boy

From hogboy, from Old Norse haugr (“cairn; mound”) + bui (“dweller; tennant”). Cognate with Scots hogboon and Old Norse haugbúi.

Questions about shag-boy

What does shag-boy mean?
Shag-boy means a ghost or goblin.
What part of speech is shag-boy?
Shag-boy is a noun.
What is the plural of shag-boy?
The plural of shag-boy is shag-boys.

Words near shag-boy in the dictionary

  1. shag wagons
  2. shag-bag
  3. shag-bags
  4. shag-bandit
  5. shag-bandits
  6. shag-boy
  7. shag-boys
  8. shag-hound
  9. shag-hounds
  10. shag-rag
  11. shagadelic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shag-boy (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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