Peg

How to spell peg

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce peg

What does peg mean?

1. nounA small pin or clip of wood, plastic, or metal used to fasten, hang, or mark something.
2. verbTo fix or hold something at a particular level, position, or value.

Peg in a sentence

• noun

  She hung the wet towels on a wooden peg by the door.

• verb

  The central bank decided to peg the currency to the dollar.

• noun

  He hammered another tent peg into the soft ground.

• verb

  The supplier agreed to peg the price for the whole year.

Where does peg come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Peg first appears in Middle English as 'pegge', and it almost certainly came into English from a Low Countries source: Middle Dutch and Middle Low German had 'pegge', meaning a peg, pin, or plug used to fasten things together. The underlying idea was always something small driven into a hole or surface to hold, hang, or stop, which is exactly what a wooden tent peg, a coat peg, or a barrel plug still does today. From that physical sense English later built figurative uses, such as 'pegging' a price to hold it steady, or having a 'peg to hang an argument on'. The origin language is not recorded with total certainty, so it is described as probably Dutch or Low German rather than proven, but the spelling has stayed reassuringly simple and phonetic throughout. Because it is so short and regular, the only thing to remember is the single g.

How the word is built

• peg (single root, no affixes; from Middle English pegge)