Word of the Day Archive
Thursday June 7, 2001
wag \WAG\ , noun:
A humorous person; a wit; a joker.
The master of ceremonies was one Boston, a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness.
-- Francis Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp
Yet the fate of all three reformers was more or less the same. Washington remained much as it had been before. ("Only more so," a wag might add.)
-- Jonathan Rauch, Government's End
Some wag has summed up the three laws of thermodynamics in everyday terms: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't even break even. 3. You can't get out of the game.
-- John Gribbin with Mary Gribbin, Almost Everyone's Guide to Science
Wag in this sense perhaps comes from the obsolete wag-halter, "a rogue; one likely to be hanged."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for wag
