Difference between revisions 12472466 and 17061496 on enwiki

The term '''fag''' derives from the word "flag" (as in: "His strength was flagging."). "Flag" appeared in the [[16th century]] and was apparently a variant of the [[Middle English]] word ''flacken.'' ''Flacken'' meant "to flutter", and was influenced by the Old French word ''flaquir.'' ''Flaquir'' meant "to be flaccid."

The word "fag" came to mean "thing hanging loosely," and was applied to the remnants of a bolt of cloth, the tail end of an originally long spool of rope, etc., It therefore had the derived meaning of any off-cut or unwanted part of any product, such as wood, cloth or meat, known as a "fag-end." 

The associations among the various strands of meaning of "fag," such as "to flutter," "to be flaccid," "thing hanging loosely," "the last and worst part of anything" seem to be better connected to the [[pejorative]] present-day sense of "[[fag (pejorative)|fag]]" and "[[faggot]]" than are the dictionary meanings of the word "faggot," which were limited strictly to the sense of "bundle" before the middle of the [[20th century]].

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Notwithstanding the above, iIn British English "fag-end" is a common term for a cigarette butt.