Word.ws English Dictionary

shug

/ʃʌɡ/

shug verb: to writhe the body so as to produce friction against one's clothes, as do those who have the itch.

Verb

shug (third-person singular simple present shugs, present participle shugging, simple past and past participle shugged)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To writhe the body so as to produce friction against one's clothes, as do those who have the itch.
    • the Comtesse Leinsengen again shugged her shoulders , drew her shawl around her , and was preparing to depart1830, Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury, The Exclusives
  2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To crawl; to sneak.
    • There I'll shug in and get a noble countenance.1621, John Ford, Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, The Witch of Edmonton

Noun

IPA/ʃʊɡ/

shug (plural shugs)

  1. (countable) A term of endearment.
    • I'll be with you in a moment, shug.

Proper noun capitalized: Shug

Shug

  1. A Scottish nickname usually applied to people with the first name Hew or Hugh or other spellings of this name.

Synonyms of shug

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of shug

Forms of shug

Verb
third-person singular presentshugs
present participleshugging
past participleshugged
pastshugged
Noun
pluralshugs
alternative formsug
alternative formshoog

Origin of shug

From Middle English shuggen, shoggen, schoggen (“to shake, shake off, mix by shaking, tremble, shake loose from one's clothing”), probably a variant of Middle English schokken (“to move rapidly, shake, push”), from Middle Low German schocken (“to shake, tremble”). See schokken.

Shortening of sugar.

Phrases with shug

Words that rhyme with shug

Questions about shug

What does shug mean?
Shug means to writhe the body so as to produce friction against one's clothes, as do those who have the itch.
What part of speech is shug?
Shug can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce shug?
Shug is pronounced /ʃʌɡ/.
What is the past tense of shug?
The past tense of shug is shugged.

Words near shug in the dictionary

  1. shuftis
  2. shuftiscope
  3. shuftiscopes
  4. shufty
  5. Shufu
  6. shug
  7. Shug Monkey
  8. shugar
  9. Shugars
  10. Shugarses
  11. Shugart

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shug (page history and authors); Shug (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)-Vealhurl-shug.wav.

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