Green’s Dictionary of Slang

peg n.1

1. the penis.

Fletcher Wit at Several Weapons III i: [Women] keep Clowns to stop gaps, and drive in pegs.
[UK]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.
[UK]C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 12: Lifting one Leg, / And pulling out his trusty Peg.
[UK] ‘Jolly Jack of all Trades’ in Pepys Ballads (1987) IV 263: Sometimes I am a Joyner and have for ]one a Peg.
[UK]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?
[UK]N. Ward Adam and Eve 210: The masculine Peg, which is hung on by Nature for the Distinction of Sexes.
[UK] 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.
[UK]Bacchanalian Mag. 111: He with his peg stopt up her vent.
[UK] ‘Come, Draw Your Peg, My Rum One’ in Cockchafer 21: Yours is the peg, but the spiggot-hole is mine!
[UK] ‘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.
[UK]‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) II 304: I held her on my peg, grasping her bum.
[US]‘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.
[US] in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) II 769: Grab that gal and set her on the peg.
[US]‘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.
Buju Banton Boom Bye Bye 🎵 Gal bend down backway / An accept di peg.
[Aus](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.

[UK]A. Pasquin Shrove Tuesday 28: My brother [...] Was struck upon the pegs and bit the dust.
[UK] ‘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.
[UK]J. Poole Hamlet Travestie II iii: Sit down,—and dam’me if you stir a peg.
[UK]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.
[UK]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 .
[US]D. Crockett Exploits and Adventures (1934) 150: He might bawl until he was hoarse for assistance, and no one would stir a peg.
[Aus]Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 18 Mar. 2/3: You know the name of no bone in the leg, / Excepting Long Innis’s wooden peg.
[US]‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 13: Stir your pegs, old gal, I’m agoin’ to the crib.
[US]J.R. Lowell Biglow Papers (1880) 89: A feller could n’t beg / A gretter blessin’ than to hev one oilers sober peg.
[US]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.
[US]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’.
[UK]J. Greenwood Dick Temple I 290: He would have the seven-and-six owing [...] or he wouldn’t move a peg.
[US]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.
[US]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.
[US]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.
[US]D. Runyon ‘Romance in the Roaring Forties’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 33: Miss Billy Perry gets Waldo Winchester on his pegs again.
[US]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!
[US]‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 22 Feb. 10/5: That lovely frame or substitute for pegs, those lovely, graceful legs.
[US]‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 51: Ah ain’t movin’ a peg ’til yu gimme’ back mah thurty dollars.
[UK]S. Berkoff East in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 70: She strode down the street – strong on those DELIRIOUS PEGS.
[UK]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.
[UK](con. 1860s) P. Ackroyd Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem 183: Sit down and rest your pegs.
[UK]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.

[UK] ‘Pray Remember Jack’ in Jovial Songster 84: Propp’d with a wooden peg, / Poll I thought would bid me pack.
[UK]‘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.
[UK] ‘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.
[Ire] ‘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.
True Flash (NY) 4 Dec. n.p.: A man who for many years had hobbled about upon wooden pegs.
[US]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!
[Scot] ‘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’.
[US]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.
[UK]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.
[US]‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 36: He may be called ‘peg’ or ‘peg-leg’ or ‘limpy’.
[Aus](con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 71: He dismounted on a mended peg.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US](con. 1860s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 19: Perhaps I should have it off, and get rid of the festering devil? Wear a wooden peg?

(c) (US tramp) a one-legged person.

[US]‘A-No. 1’ Mother of the Hoboes 43: The Rating Of The Tramps. 13 Peg: train rider who lost a foot.
[US]Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 142: Peg. – [...] A one-legged person.
[US]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)].

[US]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].

[US]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.
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.
[US]‘Hal Ellson’ Rock 11: I’d dressed good, cool shirt, cool pegs, cool brogues.
[US]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.
[US]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.
[US]B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
[US](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-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.

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.
[US]‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 211: Peg house – A place where, if the hobo wishes, he may meet Angelina.
[US]J.T. Farrell Gas-house McGinty 158: Wouldn’t you look sweet in a peg house you lousy ...
[US]G. Legman ‘Lang. of Homosexuality’ Appendix VII in Henry Sex Variants.
[US]Goldin et al. DAUL 154/2: Peg-house. 1. A house of prostitution which includes or specializes in the services of passive pederasts.
[US]Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 812: peg house – A disorderly house or resort where pederasty is practiced by female impersonators.
[UK]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.
[US]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.
[US]N. Stephenson Cryptonomicon 384: Peg house habitues [...] Pyschotic gunslingers. People who owned slaves.

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

[US]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.

[UK]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.
[UK]Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 108: Entoiser. To copulate; ‘to play at mumble-peg’.
pull one’s pegs (v.) [gold-mining imagery]

1. to leave.

[Aus]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.

[Aus](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