Shag-boy
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A ghost or goblin.
"Ghosts, bogies, and the supernatural generally have utterly vanished from this commonplace district before schools and newspapers. Even an old lady more than ninety years old said to us, "Fairies and shag-boys! lasses are often skeart at them, but I never saw none, though I have passed many a time after dark a most terrible spot for them on the road at Thorpe.""
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Ghosts, bogies, and the supernatural generally have utterly vanished from this commonplace district before schools and newspapers. Even an old lady more than ninety years old said to us, "Fairies and shag-boys! lasses are often skeart at them, but I never saw none, though I have passed many a time after dark a most terrible spot for them on the road at Thorpe.""
Etymology
From hogboy, from Old Norse haugr (“cairn; mound”) + bui (“dweller; tennant”). Cognate with Scots hogboon and Old Norse haugbúi.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.