Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pig v.1

1. to live (with); often in phrs. below.

[UK]C. Cotton Scoffer Scoff’d (1765) 189: When I pig’d with mine own Dad.
[Ire]K. O’Hara Midas II i: Oh how happy I should be Would little Nysa pig with me.
[UK] ‘Mistress Stitch in Clover’ in Nightly Sports of Venus 30: Robin was forc’d to make a third, And pig with Bodkin and his Dame.
[Ire]‘A Real Paddy’ Real Life in Ireland 193: Blake proposed calling in Swan, the exciseman, who pigg’d in the next room.
[UK]Comic Songster and Gentleman’s Private Cabinet 34: [title] A Blowen in a Alley Pigg’d.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Nov. 14/1: A man came up from South, and, pigging with gins, begat half-caste youngsters.

2. to live in a slovenly manner or under poor conditions; thus pig it

[UK]B. Weatherby Great News from Hell 15: I knew you in Ireland, when you was glad to pig with a Carr-boy for a Cut of Bread and a Drink of Beer.
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 386: And many a merry night when tipsy, / We pigg’d in straw with each a gypsy.
[UK]‘Llandisilio Hotel’ in Hilaria 128: A parson, his wife, son, and Jew / [...] / A poet pedestrian too, / Pig’d in a mud hut all together.
[Ire]Spirit of Irish Wit 181: ‘What, another child!’ said the farmer, almost frantic [...] [3rd child born] ‘d—n it, Nanny, is your mistress pigging?’.
[UK][C.M. Westmacott] Mammon in London 1 314: You’ll see wives and their sisters pigging together with the same man [...] and lightning each other to the same bed.
[UK]Peeping Tom (London) 38 151/2: ‘Why don’t we all pig here to night?’.
[UK]Sportsman 7 Mar. 2/1: Notes on News [...] England is plethoric with wealth, yet we see men and women almost forced to pig together thus .
[UK]London Life 26 July 6/2: [I]n these places [i.e. Seven Dials], human beings pig together and breed a race to infest our streets.
[UK]G.R. Sims How the Poor Live 59: A certain vigorous letter [...] which appeared in the Daily Telegraph some years ago about servants ‘pigging with their relations at home,’ and wanting the best bedroom and a feather-bed with damask furniture when in service.
[Aus]Sun. Times (Perth) 16 June 4/7: In a tenement building in the squalid Whitechapel slums, five families were found pigging in one apartment.
[Can]R. Service ‘Telegraph Operator’ Ballads of a Cheechako 93: I ‘pig’ around the place – / There’s nobody to care.

3. to eat, esp. in a greedy fashion, to overeat.

[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Nov. 40/1: The loaf has unmistakably been rent in twain, the saucers have had a generous overflow, the cloth a liberal baptism, and everywhere is evidence that the breakfasters have ’pigged‘ in haste.
[Aus]K. Gilbert Living Black 242: They were big, fat, heavy gutted people in there: shouting, bullying, pigging.
[US]G. Swarthout Skeletons 96: I pigged everything.
[UK]J. Mowry Way Past Cool 25: Like the Beaver might have looked at sixteen if he’d been black and pigging for years on junk food.
[US]Eble Campus Sl. Spring.

4. to provide with food.

[UK]C. Harris Three-Ha’Pence to the Angel 68: Yer want someone ter get you something ’ot when yer come in. Your daughter, she wouldn’t mind, I’m shore; y’ave enough o’ pigging for yourself when you’re away.

In phrases

pig down (v.)

to eat hurriedly and greedily.

[UK]T. Blacker Fixx 261: The meal you’re pigging down this very minute.
[UK]M. Manning Get Your Cock Out 32: The crowded room of freeloaders pigging down on the caviar and champagne.
pig in (v.)

1. to share a home, to live (with); usu. as pig in with.

[UK]N. Ward ‘Poet’s Ramble after Riches’ Writings (1704) 16: Why, what dost take me for a hog, / A Pedlar, drover, or a carman, / To here Pig in among such Vermin?
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 438: The Thracians pig in by themselves.
[US]H.H. Brackenridge Modern Chivalry (1937) Pt I Vol. IV Bk I 272: I think Duncan and you [...] may pig in together in that large bed.
[UK] ‘International Boat Race’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 146: To get lodging, oh, such a bother, / They all pig in with one another.
[Scot]Dundee Courier 18 Aug. 7/4: That was our bed, six of us, having to ‘pig’ down into it.
[UK]R. Whiteing No. 5 John Street 111: Nearly ninety thousand live three in a box; nay, they are still in thousands as they pig in seven to the four square walls.
[UK]Gem 17 Oct. 4: Third Form kids can’t pig in with [...] seigniors of the Fourth Form.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Dec. 15/1: The beach-combing combo pigs-in with Malays, Javanese and Chows, and is a person to be avoided or destroyed.
[NZ]D. Davin For the Rest of Our Lives 27: There was a lot to be said for living with men [...] all pigging in together.

2. to gorge oneself; often as exhortation pig in!

[UK]Magnet 22 Feb. 9: Better than pigging in here.
[UK]M. Dibdin Thanksgiving 94: I went up to the galley and scored a couple of teaspoons, and we proceeded to pig in.
pig it (v.) (also pig out)

1. to live in squalor, albeit unworried by that squalor.

[UK]‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 23: I’m not like that lazy humbug, Higgins, who sits loitering and pigging it away in the galley.
[UK]G. Allen Tents of Shem II 58: Impossible! You’d have to pig it with the goats and the cattle.
[NZ]N.Z. Truth 26 Jan. 6/4: The Fijians and Cook Islanders have been pigged out on the Exhibition grounds.
[UK]Breton & Bevir Adventures of Mrs May 170: You ain’t never knowed a char-lady like me. And [...] you’ve evident been used to pigging it.
[UK]G. & M. Cole Brothers Sackville 194: This is my sister. [...] We pig it here together somehow.
[UK]R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 115: Parlour? Anybody think we was pigging it in Streatham, or something.
[Aus]Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 229: As for pigging it in that rural slum again, I’m not going to do it.
[US]W.R. Burnett Little Men, Big World 146: He and Lola had been pigging it downstairs before: this was the life!
[UK]P. Theroux Family Arsenal 162: Don’t mind me – I usually pig it around the house.

2. to renege.

[US]H. Hapgood Autobiog. of a Thief 296: Even the copper began to pig it (weaken), probably thinking he might as well get a share of my ‘dough’.
[US]D. Runyon ‘A Piece of Pie’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 675: Never let it be said that a Conway ever pigs it on a betting proposition.

3. to prosper.

[UK]J. Cameron Hell on Hoe Street 167: They reckoned his family was pigging it.
pig out (v.) (also pig it)

1. to die.

[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict. 155: To die [...] pigging out.
Kalgoorlie Wester Argus (WA) 31 Oct. 14: When men died in California they ‘pigged out’ just as they do in Australia to the present day.
[US]D. Runyon ‘It Comes Up Mud’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 536: The old Governor has bum legs and is half out of wind and is apt to pig it any time.

2. (also pig up) to overeat massively; ext. as pig out on (a food or drink).

[UK] ‘Peas, Beans And Cabbages’ in Knowing Chaunter 6: My wife, my maid, and I, / All the whole of one day / We went p---g away, / Upon peas, beans, and cabbages!
[US]H.L. Wilson Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) 351: Rather pigged it a bit, I fancy.
[US]P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: pigging up . . . eating sweetmeats hungrily.
[US]Newsweek 30 May 53: Kim admits to being a ‘sweetaholic’ who dieted resolutely before winning the beauty pageant in Charleston, S.C., then ‘pigged out’ on pecan pie.
[US]C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 260: Fix up a nice big plate of sargassum. We’ll pig out.
[US]D. Gaines Teenage Wasteland 118: Traditional American girlcult activities: shopping, pigging out.
[Aus]R.G. Barrett White Shoes 82: Les [was] happy just to pig out while the two lovers got revved up on Moët.
[UK]Guardian G2 14 Jan. 20: Like pigging out on a pack of chocolate digestives.
[US]C. Buzzell My War (2006) 22: My friends pigged out on those pot brownies.
[US]D. Winslow The Force [ebook] ‘You don’t go bowling. That’s just a cover to pig out, get drunk and fuck cheap whores’.
[US]J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 222: A crowd of bodacious partiers had pigged out on the whole foodscape.
[UK]J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 291: He just likes watching - and pigging out, scraping the buffet clean.

3. (also pig up) to overindulge in anything.

[UK]H.E. Bates Darling Buds of May (1985) 97: He and his wife somehow pigged it out in a keeper’s cottage instead.
[US]‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 97: My pussy has hooked his nose tougher than the crystal blow he pigs up.
[US]S. King Dreamcatcher 429: With you driving my body and pigging out on my emotions.
[US]Great Falls Trib. (MT) 11 Oct. 51/4: Last week the Bobcats and their fans were pigging out on points.

4. to treat someone to a (large) meal.

[UK]J. Mowry Way Past Cool 70: Told him to meet us tonight at the Burger king. Always help to pig em out first, specially the hungry ones.
pig together (v.) [the proximity resembles pigs in a sty]

to live together, often spec. to sleep together.

[UK]Motteux (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) II Bk V 623: pan.: How do you pig together? fri.: Bare.
[UK]Vanbrugh Provoked Wife IV vi: Now, you being as dirty and as nasty as myself, we may go pig together.
[UK]Gentleman Instructed Pt III 537: When Reason sleeps Extravagance breaks loose; Quality and Peasantry pig together.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]J.B. Buckstone Billy Taylor I iv: All you young sailor-boys must pig together.
[UK]‘Jack Junk’ in Flash Minstrel! in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) I 113: They had a shelter from the weather / [...] / And in one bed they pig’d together.
[UK]T. Hood ‘Tale of a Trumpet’ Poetical Works (1906) 602/1: The fourteen Murphys all pigg’d together.
[UK]Macaulay Essay on Sir William Temple in Works IV (1866) 258: But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square would form a subject suited to the dignity of history.
[UK]G.A. Sala My Diary in America I 353: A ‘camp’ of travellers who pig in one room together, twenty strong.
[UK]J. Greenwood In Strange Company 30: They would sooner ‘pig’ together on the boards than lie in separate beds.
[Aus]‘John Miller’ Workingman’s Paradise 6: One of her fits of indignation against pigging together.
[Aus]C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 58: Pig-together, sleep together.
[UK]E. Raymond Marsh 349: Me and the boys pig together very nicely.