peg, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

peg n.¹

1. the penis.

c.1609		Fletcher Wit at Several Weapons III i: [Women] keep Clowns to stop gaps, and drive in pegs.
1653		Urquhart (trans.) Rabelais III Prologue: In the name of... the four hips that engendered you, and to the quickening peg which at that time conjoined them.
1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 12: Lifting one Leg, / And pulling out his trusty Peg.
1685–8		‘Jolly Jack of all Trades’ in Pepys Ballads (1987) IV 263: Sometimes I am a Joyner and have for ]one a Peg.
1696		Motteux (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) II Bk IV 272: Fare thee well, friend hole: she reparteed, Save thee, friend peg. Quoth Fryar John, what could they say more, were he all peg and she all Hole?
1708		N. Ward Adam and Eve 210: The masculine Peg, which is hung on by Nature for the Distinction of Sexes.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy III 68: Th’impatient Bridgroom would not stay, Good Sir, cry they, what Man can play, Till he’s wound up his pegs.
1793		Bacchanalian Mag. 111: He with his peg stopt up her vent.
1836		‘Come, Draw Your Peg, My Rum One’ in Cockchafer 21: Yours is the peg, but the spiggot-hole is mine!
1841		‘Don Giovanni or, The Man Vot Claps ’Em On The Peg’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 28: For he had a long peg, you must know.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) II 304: I held her on my peg, grasping her bum.
c.1935		‘Mae West in “The Hip Flipper”’ [comic strip] in B. Adelman Tijuana Bibles (1997) 94: Lotta soon had the drooping roger back in shape [...] here we see her camping on the peg.
1942		in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) II 769: Grab that gal and set her on the peg.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 177: The young lovers settled for a near wipe-out sixty nine before a brief ride on Jay’s peg.
1988		Buju Banton Boom Bye Bye 🎵 Gal bend down backway / An accept di peg.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] ‘[Y]ou could be smokin’ my peg with a mouthful of ice, and I’d still be steamed up’.

2. pertaining to the human leg [abbr. SE pegleg].

(a) usu. in pl., a leg.

1791		A. Pasquin Shrove Tuesday 28: My brother [...] Was struck upon the pegs and bit the dust.
1794		‘The Summer Morn’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 266: Latona’s son, looks liquorish on / Dame Nature’s grand impetus, / Till his pegs rise, then westward flies / To roger Madam Thetis.
1811		J. Poole Hamlet Travestie II iii: Sit down,—and dam’me if you stir a peg.
1820		W. Combe Doctor Syntax, Consolation (1868) 156/2: There’s many an up, and many a down; / As was the joke of my wife PEG, / Who had one short and one long leg.
1831		Satirist (London) 9 Oct. 211/2: Dear ladies fair, now on your legs, and show your understandings; / Each Trooper here shall stir his pegs, and hop at your commandings .
1836		D. Crockett Exploits and Adventures (1934) 150: He might bawl until he was hoarse for assistance, and no one would stir a peg.
1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 18 Mar. 2/3: You know the name of no bone in the leg, / Excepting Long Innis’s wooden peg.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 13: Stir your pegs, old gal, I’m agoin’ to the crib.
1848		J.R. Lowell Biglow Papers (1880) 89: A feller could n’t beg / A gretter blessin’ than to hev one oilers sober peg.
1850		W.C. Hall ‘Mike Hooter’s Bar Story’ Spirit of the Times 26 Jan. (N.Y.) 581: The tarnation critters wouldn’t budge a peg.
1862		J.R. Lowell Biglow Papers Ser. 2 (1880) 68: I [...] let myself be sucked in / To rise a peg an’ jine the crowd that went for reconstructin’.
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple I 290: He would have the seven-and-six owing [...] or he wouldn’t move a peg.
1886		J. Miller Destruction of Gotham 167: A young man might stand on his pegs a dozen years or so a dozen hours a day; but an old man like me [...] can’t stand it, gov’nor.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 16: wiggle one’s pegs To move one’s legs; to get out of the way. To bestir oneself. To act.
1906		A. Adams ‘At Commanche Ford’ Cattle Brands 🌐 I was riding a cream-colored horse, and he was as good a one as ever was built on four pegs.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Romance in the Roaring Forties’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 33: Miss Billy Perry gets Waldo Winchester on his pegs again.
1935		Cleo Brown ‘Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie’ 🎵 When I tell you to hold it this time, I don’t want you to move a peg. / And when I tell you to get it, I want you to mess around!
1941		‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 22 Feb. 10/5: That lovely frame or substitute for pegs, those lovely, graceful legs.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 51: Ah ain’t movin’ a peg ’til yu gimme’ back mah thurty dollars.
1977		S. Berkoff East in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 70: She strode down the street – strong on those DELIRIOUS PEGS.
1981		S. Berkoff Decadence in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 27: Fink a chatter with his nibs will set old Les a-trembling on his pegs.
1995		(con. 1860s) P. Ackroyd Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem 183: Sit down and rest your pegs.
2006		D. Mitchell Black Swan Green 174: Ain’t quick enough on his pegs for jobs like shuntin’ boxes.

(b) a wooden leg; one who wears one.

1800		‘Pray Remember Jack’ in Jovial Songster 84: Propp’d with a wooden peg, / Poll I thought would bid me pack.
1834		‘A Rum-Un to Look At’ in Libertine’s Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) I 136: She’s got a vooden leg, / ’Tis a patent going peg.
1837–8		‘Waggle Duff Peg’ in Cuckold’s Nest 27: My name is Bill Shepherd, my voman is Peg, / She’s a rum ’un to pitch up, though she’s got a game leg.
1841		‘Ben Battle’ Dublin Comic Songster 56: One end he tied around a beam, / And then removed his pegs, / And as his legs were off, of course, He soon was off his legs.
1841		True Flash (NY) 4 Dec. n.p.: A man who for many years had hobbled about upon wooden pegs.
1851		Melville Moby Dick (1907) 142: Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!
1877		‘Ben Battle’ in Laughing Songster 150: The army surgeon made him limbs, / Said he, ‘they’re only pegs, / But there’s as wooden members quite / As represents my legs’.
1903		N.-Y. Trib. 10 May B1: Those [i.e. beggars] who have lost their legs and are called ‘pegs,’ in recognition of the wooden limb.
1927		Exter & Plymouth Gaz. 8 Mar. 5/2: The boys call him ‘Old Peg’; / The dryest of wood that he has got / In his old wooden leg.
1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 36: He may be called ‘peg’ or ‘peg-leg’ or ‘limpy’.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 71: He dismounted on a mended peg.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1951		(con. 1860s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 19: Perhaps I should have it off, and get rid of the festering devil? Wear a wooden peg?

1918		‘A-No. 1’ Mother of the Hoboes 43: The Rating Of The Tramps. 13 Peg: train rider who lost a foot.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 142: Peg. – [...] A one-legged person.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 811: peg – A one-legged person.

3. (UK tramp) anywhere a free meal may be found [? play on spike n.² (1)].

1903

J. London People of the Abyss 108: This was ‘the peg.’ And by ‘the peg,’ in the argot, is meant the place where a free meal may be obtained.

4. (US black) in pl., trousers that taper sharply [mid-19C SE peg-top trousers, very wide in the hips and correspondingly narrow at the ankles].

1936		A.E. Duckett ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 16 May 7/1: Bobby Carrington took his new suit to the tailors and instructed him to make ‘pegs’ out of it. It seems the tailor misunderstood [...] and made the trouser legs a bit too narrow.
1942		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 7 Feb. 16: Things are up to date, Mister Alligator Bait, and we wear our pegs and nobody begs.
1955		‘Hal Ellson’ Rock 11: I’d dressed good, cool shirt, cool pegs, cool brogues.
1961		J.A. Williams Night Song (1962) 93: I thought I was a hip paddy boy, like some of the kids you see around now in pegs and drapes.
1964		R. Abrahams Deep Down In The Jungle 139: He was a mean cocksucker by the color of his clothes. / He had a twelve-inch peg and a two-button stitch; / Man, he was a cool looking son of a bitch.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1988		(con. 1930s) C.E. Lincoln The Avenue, Clayton City (1996) 165: He looked at the razor-sharp crease in Jipson’s hickory-striped pegs.

In compounds

peg-boy (n.)

a male homosexual prostitute.

1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1979		Maledicta III:2 232: Still more words of this fucking vocabulary are pegboy, per anus, possesh = ‘possession’ of a hobo, pratt, prune pusher (pile driver, etc.).

peg-house (n.) [SE peg + house n.¹ (1); the East Indian brothels where the boys allegedly sat on wooden pegs to maintain a well-distended anus]

1. a male brothel.

1919		L. Untermeyer New Era in Amer. Poetry 336: Its pages swarm with literary lamias, prostitutes, pimps, amatory murderers, suicides, syphilitics, cheap hotel bedrooms, peg-house debaucheries.
1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 211: Peg house – A place where, if the hobo wishes, he may meet Angelina.
1933		J.T. Farrell Gas-house McGinty 158: Wouldn’t you look sweet in a peg house you lousy ...
1941		G. Legman ‘Lang. of Homosexuality’ Appendix VII in Henry Sex Variants.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 154/2: Peg-house. 1. A house of prostitution which includes or specializes in the services of passive pederasts.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 812: peg house – A disorderly house or resort where pederasty is practiced by female impersonators.
1977		R. Lloyd Playland 73: The late 1880s [...] were the days of the infamous ‘peg-houses,’ a name derived from a Mideast custom in which boys were required to sit on greased wooden pegs to dilate their anuses.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 146: Many of his [i.e. G. Legman’s] other terms (boy or come-on boy, peg house and show house, dick-peddler, floater, handgig, live one, muscle in, trade) prove he used to know the words and music of gay prostitute slang but is now out of date.
1999		N. Stephenson Cryptonomicon 384: Peg house habitues [...] Pyschotic gunslingers. People who owned slaves.

2. (US Und.) a prison with a high level of homosexuality.

1950

Goldin et al. DAUL 154/2: Peg-house. [...] Any prison where pederastic degeneracy is common.

In phrases

play (at) mumble-de-peg (v.) [mumble-peg n.]

to have sexual intercourse.

c.1632		A. Brewer Countrie Girle cited in Williams Dict. Sexual Lang. II 922: Peg,-wife-Peg:–I confesse sweete Peg, there stands the Peg, That I had a desire, to have playd at mumble de Peg with all.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 108: Entoiser. To copulate; ‘to play at mumble-peg’.

pull one’s pegs (v.) [gold-mining imagery]

1. to leave.

1924

E.G. Murphy ‘Mick’ Dryblower’s Verses 34: Mick rolls up his swag abode / An silently pulled his pegs [...] An’ the train drew out at three.

2. (Aus.) to die.

1950

(con. 1936–46) K.S. Prichard Winged Seeds (1984) 127: I’ll die here where I’ve lived [...] That’s all I want, to stay here and have the sky and the stars over me when I pull me pegs.

SE in slang uses

In phrases

do one’s pegs (v.)

(Aus.) to become angry, excited or anxious.

1945

Baker Aus. Lang.

put the peg in (v.)

(UK milit.) to have abandoned drinking alcohol.

1896

‘Army Slang’ in Regiment 11 Apr. 31/2: A teetotal [soldier] is ‘on the cot,’ ‘on the steady,’ ‘on the tack,’ ‘on the dead,’ or has ‘put the peg in’.

peg n.1

In compounds

In phrases

SE in slang uses

In phrases

peg n.¹