"hog" definition, meaning, and origin

Noun

Any animal belonging to the Suidae family of mammals, especially the pig, the warthog, and the boar.
An adult swine (contrasted with a pig, a young swine).
- Weanlings grow into feeder pigs, and feeder pigs grow into slaughter hogs. […] Ultimately the end use for virtually all pigs and hogs is to be slaughtered for the production of pork and other products. - 2005 April,...
A greedy person or thing; one who refuses to share; a gluttonous one.
- resource hog
- Since the latest upgrade, this program has turned into a CPU hog.
- Yeah, whatever you old dried up fat hog. - 1998 June 3, “Conjoined Fetus Lady”, in South Park, season 2, episode 5:
Synonyms: pig belly-god buzgut cormorant epicure gannet glutton gorger gourmand gormandizer greedyguts guttle hog Homer Simpson helluo slow belly trencherman
A large motorcycle, particularly a Harley-Davidson.
- […] bike. That rider looked relatively young. If he's a Border Force guy just doing a nine to five job back there, I'd like to know where he gets the money to ride that hog,” Max said. “Looks expensive,” Chloe replied....
- […] bike balanced almost vertically while coasting to a nearly complete stop; […] ride that hog one hundred miles an hour up and off a ramp, […] - 2023 July 11, Jake Tapper, All the Demons Are Here: A Thriller, Little,...
A young sheep that has not been shorn.
A rough, flat scrubbing broom for scrubbing a ship's bottom under water.
- Hog, on board a ship, is a sort of flat scrubbing-broom, formed by inclosing a number of short twigs of birch or such wood between two pieces of plank fastened together, and cutting off the ends of the twigs. It is used...
A device for mixing and stirring the pulp from which paper is made.
A shilling coin; its value, 12 old pence.
- “’Ere y'are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown]^([sic]) for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That's seven bob.” - 1933 January...
- hog (pl hog). A shilling: orig. (ca 1670), c.; in C.19–20, low s. - 1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang:
A tanner, a sixpence coin; its value.
- hog (pl hog)... 2. In C.18–early 19, occ. a sixpence: also c., whence the U.S. sense. Prob. ex the figure of a hog on a small silver coin. - 1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang:
A half-crown coin; its value, 30 old pence.
- hog (pl hog)... 3. A half-crown: ca 1860–1910. - 1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang:
The effect of the middle of the hull of a ship rising while the ends droop.
- I would not consider a ship unseaworthy because she had a hog. There is no danger to life in sailing in a hogged ship. I have sailed in vessels having a 2-ft. hog in the keel. The keel has been straightened by being...
- On inspection it was found that the vessel's keel had a hog of nearly fourteen inches. - 2007, Charles E. Brodine, Michael J. Crawford, Christine F. Hughes, Interpreting Old Ironsides: An Illustrated Guide to USS...
A penis.
- He had to piss in the worst way, but the game was in play and there was no way he was going anywhere to relieve himself. It was right in the center of the Armand huddle that he got so desperate he pulled out his hog and...
- It wasn't like I was about to drop my panties and ride his hog in the basement; I got down and dirty, but not like that; I requested the seclusion of four walls. - 2003, Sonya Harris, Guilty Pleasures, Xlibris...

Origin

From Middle English hog, from Old English hogg, hocg (“hog”), possibly from Old Norse hǫggva (“to strike, chop, cut”), from Proto-Germanic *hawwaną (“to hew, forge”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂- (“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, hence a sense of “the cut one”. (Compare hogget for a castrated male sheep.) More at hew. Alternatively from a Brythonic language, from Proto-Celtic *sukkos, from Proto-Indo-European *suH- and thus cognate with Welsh hwch (“sow”) and Cornish hogh (“pig”).

Noun informal

A quahog (clam).

Origin

Clipping of quahog.

Forms

hogs 'og

Verb informal, transitive

To greedily take more than one's share, to take precedence at the expense of another or others.
- Hey! Quit hogging all the blankets.
- The [...] air-conditioning unit didn't work very good, and there was only one fan; and from the minute me and Winn-Dixie got in the library, he hogged it all. - 2000, Kate DiCamillo, chapter 15, in Because of...
To clip the mane of a horse, making it short and bristly.
- Some, perhaps, would wish to plait or shave the tail and crimp or hog the mane to complete the picture. - 1880, William Day, The Racehorse in Training:
1. (Herefordshire) (of a hedge) to trim up closely
To scrub with a hog, or scrubbing broom.
To cause the keel of a ship to arch upwards (the opposite of sag).
- Although most of the buoyancy of a ship is provided by the middle part of the hull and comparatively little by the tapering ends, nothing will ever prevent people from putting heavy weights into the ends of a ship. One...
- Difficulty may be encountered when securing cargo hatches on ships which hog or sag and the water-tight integrity of the ship may be impaired. - 2013, H. I. Lavery, Shipboard Operations, Routledge, →ISBN, page 267:
To take a rough cut, quickly removing material; to hog out.