bag
bæɡ
noun
Origin
Old English
bæg — bag; sack; pouch
Overview
Meaning Now
- A container made of flexible material used for carrying or holding things.
- An amount or collection of something gathered or contained in a bag.
- Informal: a person’s preferred or characteristic thing or interest; also, something disliked in set phrases such as “not my bag”.
Literal older meaning
sack; pouch
Language path
Proto-Germanic → Old English → Modern English
Earliest form
bæg
Earliest period
Old English
Journey
Bag is an old inherited Germanic word in English. Its core sense has remained very stable, but English later extended it to many figurative uses, from a person’s “bag” in slang to expressions like “bags of” meaning “a lot of.”
Evolution
- Proto-Germanic
*bagaz
“bag; pouch”
Reconstructed ancestral Germanic form; exact prehistory uncertain.
- Old English
bæg
“bag; sack; pouch”
Attested in early English texts.
- Middle English
bagge
“bag; sack; pouch”
Spelling expanded with final -e/-ge in Middle English manuscripts.
- Modern English
bag
“bag; container; by extension, a quantity or interest”
Generalized to many kinds of containers and figurative uses.
Connections
Word parts
bag
root
bag; pouch
Related across languages
German
Bagge
bag; pouch
Dutch
bag; pouch
Old Norse
baggi
bag; bundle
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Related to bag
External references use DefinedTerm semantics.