bags

Formsbagses, bagsing, bagsed

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bag.

   Travelers checked their bags at the counter before boarding.

   Both bags were lost during the connecting flight.

   Note

   The ordinary plural follows every countable sense of bag: shopping bags and suitcases, but also the cloth-covered bases of a baseball diamond. The spelling also carries meanings that no single bag shares, such as a large quantity and slang for trousers. Context, not form, tells you which one you are reading.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bag.

   The factory line bags the cereal before sealing the boxes.

   She bags the leftovers and puts them in the freezer.

   Note

   The regular present form for he, she or it, used across every sense of the verb: a factory bags cereal, a hunter bags a bird, a thief bags a wallet. One sense, making first claim, went further. Speakers took this very form as a new base and gave it endings of its own (bagses, bagsing, bagsed), creating the claiming verb.

3. 3
   noun

   A large quantity of something, typically used in the phrase "bags of."

   The new apartment has bags of natural light in the mornings.

   Don't rush; there's bags of room on the shelf for more books.

   Similarlots, loads, plenty, heaps, tons

   Note

   Plural in shape, it works like plenty or lots. It usually comes before of and a mass noun, and it takes a singular verb: there's bags of time, not there are. It can also stand alone once the thing is understood, as in "I've got bags" said of coat hangers. That makes it a ready, casual answer to an offer.

4. 4
   verbAustraliaIrelandNew ZealandUKtransitive

   To claim or reserve something for oneself before others can take it.

   By the time I got upstairs, my brother had already bagsed the top bunk.

   I bags the last slice of cake, so hands off!

   Similarclaim, reserve, grab

   Note

   This claiming verb belongs to the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is heard where siblings and friends compete for the front seat, the best horse or the comfiest armchair. Because the -s is part of the stem, the past is bagsed, and the present keeps the -s even after I. Jill Golden's Inventing Beatrice (2006) has "you bagsed the black."

5. 5
   interjection

   An exclamation used to claim something for oneself, especially in the form "Bags I."

   "Bags I the front seat!" the boy yelled, sprinting toward the car.

   "Bags I the last cookie," she announced before anyone else reached the plate.

   Similardibs

   Note

   A shouted claim with unusual word order: the pronoun follows, as in Bags I. What comes next can be a thing (Bags I the front seat) or a whole clause naming what the speaker means to do, as in "Bags I sit in the front seat!" Whoever says it first wins, which is the point. It is the exclamation behind the claiming verb.

6. 6
   nounslang

   An informal word for pants.

   The students wore wide gray bags that flapped around their ankles.

   He hitched up his bags before climbing onto the stool.

   Similartrousers, pants, slacks

   Note

   Playful slang with a period flavor. In E. M. Forster's A Room with a View (1908), a young man cries, "Emerson, you beast, you've got on my bags." Like trousers itself, it is plural only. Because bags normally means luggage, it reads clearly only when the talk is already about clothes. Elsewhere it is likely to be misunderstood.

7. 7
   nounslangvulgarcountable

   A vulgar slang term for a woman's breasts.

   The tight sweater strained across her bags as she leaned forward.

   She pulled the towel up over her bags as she stepped out of the bath.

   Similarboobs, tits

   Note

   Crude slang that belongs to rough joking and insult, never to polite, clinical or professional talk. Said about a woman, and especially to her, it is likely to give offense. It is always plural in this meaning, and it depends on context to separate it from the everyday plural meaning luggage or containers.

8. 8
   noununcountable

   A tossing game similar to cornhole, played by throwing beanbags at a raised, angled board with a hole near the top.

   They set up the boards and played bags until the sun went down.

   Every tailgate in the neighborhood ends with a heated round of bags.

   Similarcornhole

   Note

   A regional name, at home chiefly around Chicago, for the game most players elsewhere call cornhole. The rules and equipment are the same, so the choice of word marks where someone is from rather than what they play. The naming split is lively enough that Devin Willems's 2019 piece "Is it 'Bags' or 'Cornhole'?" treats it as a standing argument.

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