The following OED citation has the usual spelling: “The servant writes … to know whether Mrs. Oxford cites another dialectal dictionary: “ Knag, to wrangle, to quarrel, to raise peevish objections” ( The Dialect of Craven, in the West-Riding of the County of York, 1828, by William Carr). The scolding sense of “nag” showed up a few years later. The OED’s next citation for the verb has the usual spelling: “ Nag, to gnaw at anything hard” (from A Glossary of North Country Words, 1825, by the British antiquarian John Trotter Brockett). Oxford University Press, which published a critical edition of the work in 2018 in Etymological Collections of English Words and Provincial Expressions, dates it to the late 1690s. The glossary was unpublished when its author, White Kennett, an Anglican bishop, died in 1728. An entry for “gnag” in a glossary of contemporary provincial expressions defined it as “to gnaw, bite at something hard,” the OED says. However, Nomenclator appeared more than two centuries after “nagg” was used in that medieval household account cited above.Īs for the scolding sense of “nag,” it didn’t have quite the same meaning when it first appeared in the Yorkshire dialect of the late 17th century. The OED says Nomenclator, a 1567 dictionary by the Dutch scholar Hadrianus Junius, gives “nagge” as English for negge. Oxford cites the University of Michigan’s online Middle English Dictionary for the “neigh” origin, but adds that it “presents phonological difficulties.” The MED apparently agrees, since it introduces the etymology with a question mark.Īnother possible source for the equine “nag” is negge, a word for a small horse in early modern Dutch (spoken about 1500-1800). The usage is of uncertain origin, but it perhaps came from neighen, a Middle English verb meaning to neigh ( hnǣgan in Old English), according to the dictionary.
The OED says “nag” originally meant “a small riding-horse or pony,” but now usually refers to “an old or feeble” horse. Published in Household Accounts from Medieval England (1992), by C.
Nag nag nag pro#
The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary for the older term is from a household account in England for 1336-37: “Item in i ferro anteriore pro le nagg” (“Item: 1 front shoe for the nag”).
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