figging

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The practice of inserting ginger root into the anus, vagina or urethra, done to people as a punishment, typically in BDSM, or to horses to make them seem livelier than they are.

   Unscrupulous dealers relied on figging to pass off a tired old horse as a spirited one.

   The two of them agreed in advance that figging was not something either wanted to try.

   Note

   This word is generally thought to come from feaguing, another name for the trick of making a horse look deceptively lively, and not from fig at all. That makes it a different word from the soapmaker's figging, which really is fig plus -ing, despite the identical spelling. As the name of a practice, it takes no plural.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of fig.

   The kids were figging themselves out in pirate costumes for the parade.

   As it cooled, the soft soap began figging, with fine white streaks running through it.

   Note

   The g doubles before -ing, as in begging and hugging. Every meaning the form can carry has faded: dressing up (figging themselves out) and the streaking of soap are dated, the horse treatment is rare, and insulting someone with a fico is obsolete. As a gerund for streaking soap, it overlaps with the soapmaker's noun.

3. 3
   noundateduncountable

   White streaks or grains in soap, or their development, which occur naturally in some soaps and were once thought a sign of quality, so they were sometimes imitated artificially.

   The soapmaker held the jar up to the light to check its figging.

   Artificial figging was at one time produced by dispersing insoluble fillers in the base.

   1949, Soap, Cosmetics

   Note

   The trade argued about what these streaks proved: The National Provisioner in 1897 insists that a first-class soft soap need not fig while a poor one may. The likely cause is potash salts of certain fatty acids separating out, and makers at one time faked the look by stirring insoluble fillers into the base.

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