Subscriber login


Forgot your password?

Library card login

Other

hog

Pronunciation: /hɒg/
Translate hog | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of hog

noun

  • 1a domesticated pig, especially a castrated male reared for slaughter.
  • a feral pig.
  • a wild animal of the pig family, for example a warthog.
  • informal a greedy person.
  • 2 informal, trademark in the UK a large motorcycle, in particular a Harley Davidson.
  • 3 (also hogg) dialect a young sheep before the first shearing.

verb (hogs, hogging, hogged)

[with object]
  • 1 informal take or use most or all of (something) in an unfair or selfish way:he never hogged the limelight
  • 2cause (a ship or its keel) to curve up in the centre and sag at the ends as a result of strain.

Phrases

go the whole hog

informal do something completely or thoroughly: George decided to go the whole hog and join the Total Abstinence Society
[of several origins suggested, one interprets hog as the American slang term for a ten cent piece; another refers to one of Cowper's poems (1779), which discusses Muslim uncertainty about which parts of the pig are acceptable as food, leading to the ‘whole hog’ being eaten]

live high on (or off) the hog

North American informal have a luxurious lifestyle.

Derivatives

hogger

noun

hoggery

noun

hoggish

adjective

hoggishly

adverb

hog-like

adjective

Origin:

late Old English hogg, hocg, perhaps of Celtic origin and related to Welsh hwch and Cornish hoch 'pig, sow'

hog in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of hog in the US English dictionary