peg

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
6
Words With Friends
8
Letters
3
Pronunciation
/ˈpɛɡ/
See all 5 pronunciations
/ˈpɛɡ/ · [ˈpʰɛɡ] · /ˈpeɪ̯ɡ/ · [ˈpʰeɪ̯ɡ] · /pɛɡ/

Definition of peg

40 senses · 3 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. A cylindrical wooden or metal object used to fasten or as a bearing between objects.
See all 40 definitions

noun

  1. A cylindrical wooden or metal object used to fasten or as a bearing between objects.
  2. A protrusion used to hang things on.
    “Hang your coat on the peg and come in.”
  3. (figuratively)A support; a reason; a pretext.
    “a peg to hang a claim upon”
  4. A peg moved on a crib board to keep score.
  5. A fixed exchange rate, where a currency's value is matched to the value of another currency or measure such as gold.
    “The following became obvious quite quickly – the cryptosphere needed a nonvolatile peg.”
  6. (UK)A small quantity of a strong alcoholic beverage.
    “This over, the club will be visited for a "peg," Anglice drink.”
    “The name had come to mean any aromatic essence of herbs by the time the first thirsty colonial poured a peg of Who-shot-John into his mint water.”
  7. A place formally allotted for fishing
  8. (colloquial, dated)A leg or foot.
    “"Now I'm cleaned up for thee: tha's no 'casions ter stir a peg all day, but sit and read thy books."”
  9. One of the pins of a musical instrument, on which the strings are strained.
    “O, you are well tuned now! / But I'll set down the pegs that make this music, / As honest as I am.”
    “Did we form ourselves, choosing, and our powers? I find myself, for one, as a stringed instrument with chords and stops - but I have no power to turn the pegs, or pitch my thoughts to a higher or lower key.”
  10. A step; a degree.
    “to screw papal authority to the highest peg”
    “We still have worsted all your holy tricks; / Trepann'd your party with intrigue, / And took your grandees down a peg[…]”
  11. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of clothes peg.
  12. A topic of interest, such as an ongoing event or an anniversary, around which various features can be developed.
    “[…] all news media keep a supply of features on hand, waiting for a peg to make them topical.”
    “Journalists and prospective sources wishing to attract their attention are constantly on the lookout for pegs. The process by which a peg is identified is informed by news values.”
  13. (slang)A stump.
    “Lindy hit the pegs with five deliveries out of six.”
  14. (slang)The penetration during anal sex using a strap-on dildo.
    “Get your strap-on out and give me a nice peg!”
  15. (archaic, slang)A serving of brandy and soda.
    “I then ordered a "peg" (brandy-and-soda) to be brought to my tent, and returned to have a smoke before turning in again.”
  16. (India)A serving of any hard spirit, particularly whisky.
    “This is the sort of drinking that Anna Hazare fought to eradicate from Ralegan Siddhi, as Colonel Phatak explained, after I joked about an army man needing his evening peg of whisky before dinner.”
  17. (UK, obsolete, slang)A shilling.
    “The price of a case (five shillings piece bad) from the smasher is about one shilling; an alderman (two and sixpence) about sixpence; a peg (shilling) about threepence; a downer or sprat (sixpence) about twopence.”
  18. An easily recalled image that a person mentally visualizes with something else, in order to remember that other thing. See mnemonic peg system.
    “To remember this list of early psychologists, you recall each peg along with its image of an early psychologist that you placed there.”
    “Multiple items can be stored at each location or with each peg.”
  19. (abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, countable, uncountable)Acronym of polyethylene glycol.
  20. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism)Initialism of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy.
  21. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism, uncountable)Initialism of price/earnings to growth.
    “PEG ratio”
  22. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, uncountable)Initialism of public, educational, and government (access television).
  23. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism)Initialism of parsing expression grammar.
    “This is a form of grammar called a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG). PEGs use a different form of grammar which can handle most context-free situations and some context-sensitive ones.”
  24. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, uncountable)Abbreviation of pyroelectric generator.

verb

  1. (transitive)To fasten using a peg.
    “Let's peg the rug to the floor.”
  2. (transitive)To affix or pin.
    “I found a tack and pegged your picture to the bulletin board.”
    “She lunged forward and pegged him to the wall.”
  3. (transitive)To fix a value or price.
    “China's currency is no longer pegged to the American dollar.”
    “Wages absorbed 80% of the total revenue (which was inescapable), and they were rising at almost twice the rate of fares, which were pegged by law.”
  4. (transitive)To narrow the cuff openings of a pair of pants so that the legs take on a peg shape.
  5. (slang, transitive)To throw.
  6. (transitive)To throw a ball at (someone), to hit (someone) with a ball.
  7. (slang, transitive)To indicate or ascribe an attribute to.
    “He's been pegged as a suspect.”
    “I pegged his weight at 165.”
    “1997 page 84 of Patriot Gambit by Don Pendletone Bolan pegged his weight somewhere around 150 pounds. If he was armed, the weapon wasn't showing. Still, the Executioner would take no chances.”
  8. To move one's pegs to indicate points scored; to score with a peg.
    “She pegged twelve points.”
  9. (slang, transitive)To reach or exceed the maximum value on (a scale or gauge).
    “We pegged the speedometer across the flats.”
  10. (slang, transitive)To engage in anal sex by penetrating with a strap-on dildo.
    “When you're pegging him and he gets close to orgasm, you'll observe a number of physical signs […]”
  11. (intransitive)To keep working hard at something; to peg away.
    “For more than the period of his splendid service in India, which the country was not slow to acknowledge, the Volunteers had kept pegging at it, despite all the official obstacles thrown in the way […]”
  12. (archaic, slang)To drink alcohol frequently, especially brandy and soda; to tipple.
  13. (UK, obsolete, slang, transitive)To drive (a hackney carriage).
    “I was pegging a hack when the horse started limping. I got down to see if he'd picked up a stone and he lashed out at me.”

name

  1. (diminutive, form-of)A female given name.
  2. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping)A female given name.
  3. (Canada, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, slang)Clipping of Winnipeg (city), usually preceded by "the".
    “I just got back from the Peg.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle English pegge, from Middle Dutch pegge (“pin, peg”), from Old Dutch *pigg-, *pegg-, from Proto-Germanic *pig-, *pag- (“peg, stake”), from Proto-Indo-European *bak-, *baḱ- (“club, pointed stick, peg”). Cognate…

See full etymology

From Middle English pegge, from Middle Dutch pegge (“pin, peg”), from Old Dutch *pigg-, *pegg-, from Proto-Germanic *pig-, *pag- (“peg, stake”), from Proto-Indo-European *bak-, *baḱ- (“club, pointed stick, peg”). Cognate with Dutch dialectal peg (“pin”), Low German pig, pigge (“peg, stick with a point”), Low German pegel (“post, stake”), Swedish pigg (“tooth, spike”), Danish pig (“spike”), Norwegian Bokmål pigg (“spike”), Irish bac (“stick, crook”), Latin baculum (“staff”), Latvian bakstît (“to poke”), Ancient Greek βάκτρον (báktron, “staff, walking stick”). Related to beak. This is one of the very few English words that begin with a p and come from Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic *p, when not in a consonant cluster beginning with *s, developed by Grimm's law from the Proto-Indo-European consonant *b, which was very rare. (To indicate or ascribe an attribute to): Assumed to originate from the use of pegs or pins as markers on a bulletin board or a list.

Anagrams of peg

1 play · some not in Scrabble

Words you can make from peg

1 playable

2-letter words

1 word

Hooks

1 extension · 1 back

A single letter you can add to peg to make another valid word.

Find your best play with peg

See every word you can make from a set of letters that includes peg, or browse word lists you can mine for high-scoring plays.