scag

• skag

Unknown.^[1][2] Compare scat (“heroin; whiskey”), slag (“waste; a prostitute”), skank (“a disreputable woman”).

• IPA^(key): /skæɡ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æɡ

scag (countable and uncountable, plural scags)

1. (slang, uncountable) Heroin.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:heroin

   • 1973, “Sport”, in Hustler's Convention, performed by Lightnin' Rod:

     And I was snorting scag while other kids played tag

   • 1975, David Allan Coe (lyrics and music), “Cocaine Carolina”, performed by Johnny Cash:

     So goodbye Cocaine Carolina, you and I are through / I'm going back to Sandy Scag, she knows just what to do

   • 1996, Mark Ravenhill, Shopping and Fucking, Scene One:

     Mark: No. I'm off the scag. Ten days without the scag. And I'm going away.

   • 2013 November 12, Gabe Liedman, “Old School” (1:48 from the start), in Brooklyn Nine-Nine‎^[1], season 1, episode 8, spoken by Young Jake (Miles Platt):

     “"The detectives wiped the mobsters' blood off their boots and found the scag." Scag is heroin. And the book says it's so good, you can never stop doing it!” “See me after class, Jacob.”

2. (slang, countable, derogatory, originally African-American Vernacular) A woman of loose morals.
3. (slang, countable, dated, US) A cigarette.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:cigarette

   • 1915, “The Doomsday Butt”, in The Cornhusker, page 458:

     “Then have a skag,” said I. / “’Twill make it seem like happier times, / You liked this brand, I understand.”

   • 1996, Paul Bunker, Keith Barlow, Bunker's War: The World War II Diary of Paul D. Bunker, page 134:

     Awoke when our florescent lights came on and went outside to smoke a few scags before breakfast.

• Vietnamese: xì ke

scag (third-person singular simple present scags, present participle scagging, simple past and past participle scagged)

1. (computing) To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the file system or by causing media damage.

   That last power hit scagged the system disk.

• CAGs, CGAs, cags

From Old Norse [Term?].

scag (present analytic scagann, future analytic scagfaidh, verbal noun scagadh, past participle scagtha)

1. to strain, filter
2. to drain off
3. to refine
4. to sift
5. to derive, spring (from source)

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “scacaid”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “scag”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN
• de Bhaldraithe, Tomás (1959) “scag”, in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm
• “scag”, in New English-Irish Dictionary, Foras na Gaeilge, 2013-2025