Talk:dag

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Are any of these senses real? -- Beobach972 02:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the Australian sense of a "loser" seems OK, judging by the fact that it's been in there a long time and Hippietrail (an Australian) edited the article back then. There is also a verb sense pertaining to the cutting of cloth that isn't in there yet. --EncycloPetey 02:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't know about the cloth sense, (and assuming that is not the one you are questioning) but I can vouch for both of the others. Dag as an insult is very common in Australia, but is also the name of the fly blown mess at the back of a sheep.--Dmol 15:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I'll take your word for it; the obscurity of the sheep definition just made me suspicious. -- Beobach972 16:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, dag, as far as I remember the usage (from growing up on a sheep farm in 1970s South Australia) meant one of the lumps of wool that hang off the back of a sheep. These are what you remove by crutching to avoid fly strike. (And, in Australia at least, there's no tail on an adult sheep!) I don't remember hearing dag in reference to a person until I moved to NSW in the 1980s -- generally affectionate, a bit like wally in England, and/or in the sense of being nerdy. ('I felt like such a dag wearin' those new jeans.' 'Mate! Those jeans are daggy!') Samdutton 06:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The feces clotted wool under a sheeps tail (remember, Australia was a nation of sheep in the 19th century) was the origin of the insult. Try http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/so-to-like-speak/2006/04/08/1143916762062.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap3 for a reference to this meaning... (No user account) 03:09, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

From RFV (2)

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This was RFVd at the beginning of April - I can find no mention of what is to be verified. Should the rfv be removed - perhaps it needs cleaning up? —Saltmarsh 06:22, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps they meant to RFV all senses? Personally, I've never heard any of them; the only sense of dag I'm familiar with is one that's not listed: an acronym for "directed acyclic graph" (the ordered pair of a set V and a subset E of some partial ordering relation on V). —Ruakh_TALK 06:38, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

You can see from this edit, when I added the RFV tag that the only senses listed at that time were :

1. Sheep's wool matted with dung; feces clinging to the hair around an anus,
2. (Australian slang, New Zealand slang) an uncool person commonly not a dork, loser, nerd. May be used as form of endearment emphasising that they are different.

I wanted these senses, verified, and I withdrew the RFV after Australian contributors assured me that the term was very common in Australia. — Beobach972 15:27, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

...and I forgot to remove the RFV tag. There are other senses listed now, however, so I'll leave the tag in case you (Ruakh) would like verification of them. — Beobach972 15:31, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

No, that's fine, thanks; none looks particularly suspicious to me. (I might try to cite them at some point, in which case I'll bring any senses here that I don't manage to.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but, unstricken. Those same two senses reek of nonsense. There's a citation given that doesn't match the word being cited. --Connel MacKenzie 09:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• Merriam-Webster online dag1 sense 2: "matted or manure-coated wool"
• Wikipedia entry on dag "subculture": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dags_%28subculture%29
• Article on Australian National University website: http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/ozwords/Oct%202000/TailDag.html

— Hippietrail 01:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's an illustrative cite from a book called Dork Geek Jew by Danny Katz:

Des is a dag, he’s the biggest dag I’ve ever met; Des has a part down the middle of his hair, Des plays Dungeons and Dragons on Sunday mornings, Des wears a digital watch—one of those old ones that you have to press a button on to make them light up. Des can quote all the Monty Python routines off by heart AND do them in a stupid British voice, Des is the president of the Toby Jug Collectors Society of Victoria, Des spends most evenings sitting at home listening to his collection of ethnic folk-dance records—he says the happiest day of his life was when Polkasonic won Best Polka Album at last year’s Grammies.

But the most daggy thing about Des is his obsession with trains; he LOVES trains. — Hippietrail 01:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

From a glossary in Living & Working in Australia by Laura Veltman:

Dag – first used to describe bits of excrement that cling to the wool of a sheep, nowadays to denote one who is socially embarrassing, perhaps unknowingly nonconformist or unfashionable. — Hippietrail 02:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

In a section "'Down under' slang: useful words and phrases" in Going to Live in Australia: Your Practical Guide to Beginning a New Life By Mary Neilson and Mathew Collins:

dag – funny person, or nerd — Hippietrail 02:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

From a glossary in Faces in the Street by Pip Wilson:

Dag: Simple person, or dried excreta around the anus of a sheep. Both worthy of excision. — Hippietrail 02:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

From RFV (3)

Here's the link to the discussion below in the page-history. — Beobach 07:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

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dag

Lumps of sheep faeces attached to wool is standard usage: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dag http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/dag_1 — This unsigned comment was added by 71.139.41.236 (talk).

Standard (slang) usage: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/dag_2 — This unsigned comment was added by 71.139.41.236 (talk).

Who tagged this by the way? It's in my Oxford dictionary, but it might be a bugger to cite just because it only has three letters and exists in at least a dozen other languages. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought we'd settled this about 3 years ago. Details in the talk pages.--Dmol 12:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I found some citations for the "person who dresses unfashionably" sense. The 2004 usage might fit better with "socially conservative", although the reporter seems to be straining to use the word "unfashionably". Maybe the definition needs a tweak. Pingku 13:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I remember this word well; I was the one who tagged it when it first appeared. (I didn't tag it this time.) At that time, in two separate discussions (preserved on the talk page), it was kept as being in "widespread use" in Australia. I will see about cleaning it up and verifying it. — Beobach972 20:17, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Cited, struck, RFV-passed. — Beobach972 20:48, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

From RFV (4)

Link to the relevant discussion at RFV from page history. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 21:42, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

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dag

Sense: to think. The normal word for "think" is dink and there is no cognate of this verb in Dutch either. —CodeCat 18:45, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

It's perfectly real, and there is a cognate in Dutch, namely dacht. Not surprisingly, this verb was originally an imperfect, and still sees its principal use thus. But now I have to go and rustle up citations for you... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:04, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Cited. It looks like it's a bit archaic, but I don't know enough Afrikaans to be sure. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:17, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

What you cited is the past participle, which isn't what I'm disputing; the archaic preterite seems ok too. But is "dag" ever used as a present tense or as an infinitive? In other words, does it deserve a lemma with its own set of inflections? —CodeCat 19:56, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

It isn't. (Well, maybe colloquially, but it's hard to weed those uses out.) But as you may not have noticed, I put a context label on it to indicate that. So the sense itself is fine, because the past participle can't be a past participle of anything other than dag. It's like finding three citations of "he metaknowledged" — that could only be the past tense of an English verb "to metaknowledge", so it's sufficient for attestation. A preterite can't have a past participle, so there needs to be another sense. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:18, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

One of the books you cited in fact says that gedag (as well as gedog) is an alternative form of gedink and therefore the past participle of dink. There is no such infinitive as dag, this is just an irregular past participle. —CodeCat 22:05, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

That's a weird way to think of it, because of course it's not a "real" alternative form, but I guess I don't care enough to argue it, and admittedly I can't find present tense uses. We should have a usage note at dink to explain all this and you can move the citations somewhere, not sure where. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Resolved. --WikiTiki89 15:34, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Confusing etymology

“the ending is possibly the faintly pejorative -ard suffix”

What ending? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:15, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2021

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dag

Rfv-sense: A dagger; a poniard. appears in Johnson's dictionary Notusbutthem (talk) 15:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 21:36, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 20:56, 27 December 2021 (UTC)