Stag

How to spell stag

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stag

What does stag mean?

1. nounAn adult male deer, typically one bearing antlers.
2. nounA social gathering or party attended only by men, especially before a wedding.

Stag in a sentence

• The stag raised its head and watched us from the edge of the forest.

• His brothers organised a weekend stag in the city before the wedding.

• The photographer waited for hours to capture a stag crossing the moor.

• The groom invited a dozen friends to his stag celebration.

Where does stag come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Stag comes from the Old English stagga, a word for a male deer, and it belongs to the broader Germanic family of words for adult male animals. The root carries the sense of a creature in its mature, antlered prime, and it may be distantly connected to older words suggesting something stiff, upright, or vigorous, fitting a stag standing alert in a field. Over the centuries the spelling settled into its blunt three-letter form, which mirrors the short, clipped way the word is spoken. By the 1800s English had stretched the sense playfully, so a gathering of men without women became a stag party, the male deer standing in for the all-male company. The same word also gave rise to going stag, meaning attending a social event without a partner. Its plain spelling makes it one of the easier English words to write, with no silent letters or doubled consonants to trip a writer.

How the word is built

• stag (single root from Old English stagga, meaning a male deer; no prefix or suffix)