shaggy

Etymology

It is formed from English shag + -y,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from the noun shag in the sense of rough, matted hair or wool.^[3][7] The noun is from Old English sceacga (“rough matted hair”),^[2][7][8] although Etymonline calls the link only probable, since the word is missing in Middle English.^[3] The Old English noun is cognate with Old Norse skegg (“beard”)^[2][7][8][3] and with Old English sceaga (“coppice”), the source of shaw.^[2][7][8] It replaced the earlier shagged, from Old English sceacgede (“hairy”),^[3][7] compare skeggjaðr (“bearded”) and Danish skægget (“bearded”).^[3] The OED notes that an altered form, shackie, appears somewhat earlier in its quotations.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Covered with long, coarse or bushy hair, or of a person unkempt: about 1590, in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.^[2] Merriam-Webster dates the word to 1581,^[5] and Etymonline to the 1580s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Old English had only the noun and the adjective sceacgede, once and twice in glosses; none of these words is found again until the late 16th century,^[2][7] when shaggy replaced shagged.^[7] The adjective soon spread from hairy animals and people to skins and garments (1611), to a hillside or the earth covered with a rough tangled growth (1605), to hair itself (1638), to cloth with a long rough nap (1664, in Pepys) and to trees and woods (1789).^[2][4] Botanists and zoologists used it from 1796 for hairy plants and animals, as in shaggy maple.^[2] The shaggy-dog story, a long, tedious joke with a pointless ending, is attested from 1943 and was a fad in the mid-1940s;^[3][4] Etymonline notes that the tale usually cited as its origin, about a lost shaggy dog, seems no older than the phrase.^[3] In Northumberland shaggy was also a noun of contempt.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1590 – covered with long, coarse hair; unkempt.^[2] Merriam-Webster dates this sense to 1581.^[5]
• 1605 – of the earth or a hillside, covered with a rough growth.^[2]
• 1611 – of a skin or garment, covered with coarse hair.^[2]
• 1638 – of hair, rough, coarse and tangled.^[2]
• 1664 – of cloth, having a long rough nap.^[2]
• 1796 – botany and zoology, hairy.^[2]
• 1943 – shaggy-dog story.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Covered with long, coarse or matted hair: a shaggy sheepdog.^[5][2][4]
2. Of hair: long, rough and tangled: his shaggy grey eyebrows.^[2][4]
3. Covered with thick, tangled or unkempt vegetation.^[5][2][4]
4. Of cloth: having a long, coarse nap.^[2][4]
5. In botany and zoology, covered with rough or long hairs; hirsute.^[2]

Word family

• shaggily
• shagginess
• shaggy-dog story

Related words

• shag
• shaw
• shagged

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)