Talk:fag tag

Etymology scriptorium discussion

Which definition of fag would these terms come from? fag tag is probably from the first textile term, but fish-fag seems to be etymologically unrelated. Flackofnubs (talk) 09:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

A US equivalent of fag tag is (or was half a decade or so ago) (fruit loop. I guess the implication (among the young adolescent boys who used the term) was that it was one of those fussy little details that only gays cared about. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:23, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Maybe "fish-fag" is an assimilation of "fish hag", although I also found an older meaning of faggot meaning something like 'shrew, hellcat, bitch'. Wakuran (talk) 14:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

• All the sources I've found seem to indicate it relates to etymology 2 of fag, i.e., hard work, drudgery. See [1], [2], and this source which uses the compound in a different sense: [3].
• The fact that it is chiefly used of women does give one pause, but that could just be a sociological happenstance unrelated to the etymology. Furthermore, there are no relevant results for "fish-faggot". (Is there evidence that this female sense of faggot was shortened to fag back in the 19th century?) OTOH, there are a handful of search results for "fish-hag", but the connection seems uncertain.
• Worth noting that Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (2005) gives an entirely different meaning of fish-fag as "pickpocket", relating to etymology 1 of fag. 98.170.164.88 18:52, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by "etymology 1"? Wakuran (talk) 21:21, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Cassell's says that the term might derive from fag-end, which is linked to fag#Etymology 1, "end of a thing". However, Cassell puts a question mark on this and says it might alternatively come from dialectal fag (“to cut corn with a sickle”), which we don't have (but is in EDD). To be clear, Cassell is only discussing the pickpocket sense of fish-fag, which we don't have, not the fishmonger sense that we do have. 98.170.164.88 21:57, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I've only heard the term fag tag once in my life .... when an older boy used a stretched-out coat hanger to grab me from behind so i couldnt walk away. The implication was clear .... but I've only heard it used once, so there's always the possibility that it came from some innocent meaning and got reinterpreted. —Soap— 15:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I also always interpreted the "fag" in "fag tag" as being the F-slur. Since a fag tag is not, in fact, "a rough or coarse defect in the woven fabric", I don't think the textile sense of fag is a likely source. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:00, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

"[S]uch a loop, supposedly, can be used to hold a victim ready for buggery (cf. fairy loop n.)." From Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (2005). The earliest source I was able to find is less explicit about the etymology, but still gives "fruit loop" as a synonym. This source gives a different interpretation than Cassell's, but still relates it to homosexuality. 98.170.164.88 17:38, 13 December 2022 (UTC)