- A strip of leather, paper, metal, or plastic attached to something or hung from a wearer's neck to identify, classify, or label: sale tags on all coats and dresses.
- The plastic or metal tip at the end of a shoelace.
- The contrastingly colored tip of an animal's tail.
- Sports. A bright piece of feather, floss, or tinsel surrounding the shank of the hook on a fishing fly.
- A dirty, matted lock of wool.
- A loose lock of hair.
- A rag; a tatter.
- A small, loose fragment: I heard only tags and snippets of what was being said.
- An ornamental flourish, especially at the end of a signature.
- A designation or an epithet, especially an unwelcome one: He did not take kindly to the tag of pauper.
- A brief quotation used in a discourse to give it an air of erudition or authority: Shakespearean tags.
- A cliché, saw, or similar short, conventional idea used to embellish a discourse: These tags of wit and wisdom bore me.
- The refrain or last lines of a song or poem.
- The closing lines of a speech in a play; a cue.
- Computer Science.
- A label assigned to identify data in memory.
- A sequence of characters in a markup language used to provide information, such as formatting specifications, about a document.
- Slang. A graffito featuring a word or words, especially the author's name, rather than a picture: “Instead of a cursive linear tag, Super Kool painted his name along the exterior of a subway car in huge block pink and yellow letters” (Eric Scigliano).
v., tagged, tag·ging, tags. v.tr.
- To label, identify, or recognize with or as if with a tag: I tagged him as a loser. See synonyms at mark1.
- To put a ticket on (a motor vehicle) for a traffic or parking violation.
- To charge with a crime: The suspect was tagged for arson.
- To add as an appendage to: tagged an extra paragraph on the letter.
- To follow closely: Excited children tagged the circus parade to the end of its route.
- To cut the tags from (sheep).
- To add a taggant to: explosives that were tagged with coded microscopic bits of plastic.
- To mark or vandalize (a surface) with graffiti: tagged the subway walls.
To follow after; accompany: tagged after me everywhere; insisted on tagging along.
[Middle English tagge, dangling piece of cloth on a garment, possibly of Scandinavian origin.]
tagger tag'ger n.tag2 (tăg)
n.
- Games. A children's game in which one player pursues the others until he or she is able to touch one of them, who then in turn becomes the pursuer.
- Baseball. The act of putting out a base runner who is not on a base by touching that player with the ball.
- Sports. The act of touching a player as a substitute for tackling in touch football.
- To touch (another player) in the game of tag.
- Baseball. To touch (a base runner) with the ball in order to put that player out.
- Sports. To touch (the runner) as a substitute for tackling in touch football.
tag up Baseball.
- To return to and touch a base with one foot before running to the next base after a fielder has caught a fly ball.
[Perhaps variant of Scots tig, touch, tap, probably alteration of Middle English tek.]
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