wag hemp

English

Verb

wag hemp (third-person singular simple present wags hemp, present participle wagging hemp, simple past and past participle wagged hemp)

1. To be hanged.

   Synonym: stretch hemp

   • 1927 August, Leslie Hotson, “Pirates in Parchment”, in The Atlantic:

     In fact, the more I read the more I am persuaded that good Queen Bess's glorious days were more specious than spacious, and that Bess herself was a right mean queen. Look again at that bill. She even borrowed the ladder from which they were turned off! But I may be doing her an injustice. Perhaps she is only emphasizing her queenly preference for larceny of the grandest kind. Those who rob the Spaniards on a large scale, you remember, she knights. But these little fellows, who meddle with small shipping nearer home, she callously turns off borrowed ladders, to wag hemp in the wind.