Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various mammals of the family Suidae, which includes the domesticated pig as well as wild species, such as the wild boar and the warthog.
  • noun A domesticated pig weighing over 54 kilograms (120 pounds).
  • noun A self-indulgent, gluttonous, or filthy person.
  • noun One that uses too much of something.
  • noun Chiefly British A young sheep before it has been shorn.
  • noun The wool from this type of sheep.
  • noun Slang A big, heavy motorcycle.
  • intransitive verb Informal To take more than one's share of.
  • intransitive verb To cause (the back) to arch like that of a hog.
  • intransitive verb To cut (a horse's mane) short and bristly.
  • intransitive verb To shred (waste wood, for example) by machine.
  • intransitive verb Nautical To arch upward in the middle. Used of a ship's keel.
  • idiom (on/off) In a lavish or extravagant manner.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut (the hair) short: as, to hog a horse's mane.
  • To scrape (a ship's bottom) under water.
  • To carry on the back.
  • To droop at both ends, so as to resemble in some degree a hog's back in outline: said of the bottom of a ship when in this condition either through faulty construction or from accident.
  • In the manège, to hold or carry the head down, like a hog.
  • In curling, to play, as a stone, with so little force that it does not clear the hog-score.
  • noun In the game of curling, a stone which does not go over the hog-score; also, the hog-score itself.
  • To act as greedily and as selfishly as a hog in regard to (something); take more than one's share of; appropriate selfishly.
  • noun A small locomotive used for hauling cars about mines; a hogback locomotive.
  • noun A machine for grinding logs.
  • noun In shipbuilding, the condition of being hogged: generally used quantitatively with reference to the amount of deflection from the normal condition. See hog, intransitive verb, 1.
  • noun A gelded pig; a barrow-pig.
  • noun An omnivorous non-ruminant mammal of the family Suidœ, suborder Artiodactyla, and order Ungulata; a pig, sow, or boar; a swine.
  • noun Some animal like or likened to a hog, not of the family Suidœ. See wart-hog, Phacochœrus, peccary, and Dicotyles.
  • noun A sheep shorn in the first year, or just after the first year; a young sheep.
  • noun A young colt.
  • noun A bullock a year old.
  • noun One who has the characteristics of the hog; a mean, stingy, grasping, gluttonous, or filthy person.
  • noun Nautical, a sort of scrubbing- broom for scraping a ship's bottom under water.
  • noun A stirrer or agitator in the pulp-vat of a paper-making plant.
  • noun A shilling, or perhaps a sixpence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb (Naut.) To become bent upward in the middle, like a hog's back; -- said of a ship broken or strained so as to have this form.
  • transitive verb To cut short like bristles.
  • transitive verb (Naut.) To scrub with a hog, or scrubbing broom.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A quadruped of the genus Sus, and allied genera of Suidæ; esp., the domesticated varieties of Sus scrofa, kept for their fat and meat, called, respectively, lard and pork; swine; porker; specifically, a castrated boar; a barrow.
  • noun Low. A mean, filthy, or gluttonous fellow.
  • noun engraving A young sheep that has not been shorn.
  • noun (Naut.) A rough, flat scrubbing broom for scrubbing a ship's bottom under water.
  • noun (Paper Manuf.) A device for mixing and stirring the pulp of which paper is made.
  • noun See under Bush, Ground, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the larva of the green grapevine sphinx; -- so called because the head and first three segments are much smaller than those behind them, so as to make a resemblance to a hog's snout. See Hawk moth.
  • noun an epidemic contagious fever of swine, attended by liquid, fetid, diarrhea, and by the appearance on the skin and mucous membrane of spots and patches of a scarlet, purple, or black color. It is fatal in from one to six days, or ends in a slow, uncertain recovery.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the axis deer.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English hogg, possibly of Celtic origin; see sū- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English hogg, hocg ("hog"), possibly from Old Norse hǫggva ("to strike, chop, cut"), from Proto-Germanic *hawwanan (“to hew, forge”), from Proto-Indo-European *kowə- (“to beat, hew, forge”). Cognate with Old High German houwan, Old Saxon hauwan, Old English hēawan (English hew). "Hog" originally meant a castrated male pig. (Compare "hoggett" for a castrated male sheep.) More at hew.

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Examples

Comments

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  • WeirdNet puts the 'person regarded as greedy and pig-like' at the top, but then references sheep before it gets to the actual pig.

    May 22, 2008

  • You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don't you? Very well, be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with.

    -Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

    August 3, 2009

  • See hoggerel.

    Scots hog-ham: hung mutton of a year-old sheep that has died of disease, or been smothered in the snow; hog and tatoe: braxy mutton stewed with potatoes, onion, salt, pepper, &c., for farm-servants. --Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary and Supplement, 1841.

    May 20, 2011

  • cerdo

    September 30, 2013