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baggy

UK/ˈbæɡi/US/ˈbæɡi/
adjectiveB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,484 of 15,258neutral

Baggy means much too loose, hanging off the body. A jumper with no shape left in it.

Clothes are what go baggy: baggy trousers, a baggy cardigan, jeans gone baggy at the knee. It can be a fault or a fashion depending entirely on the decade. The word comes from bag, and the image is exact, since a baggy garment hangs the way an empty bag does. It also describes skin under the eyes, and by extension a piece of writing that is loose and needs tightening.

Definitions of baggy

  1. 1adjectivebaggyLoose and hanging away from the body.B1+

    “He wore a baggy old jumper over everything.”

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    bagge

  2. English

    bag

  3. English, today

    baggy

From bag + -y. bag comes from Middle English bagge. Middle English bagge, from Old Norse baggi (“bag, pack, satchel, bundle”) (whence also Old French bague (“bundle, package, sack”)); related to Old Norse bǫggr (“harm, shame; load, burden”), of unknown origin.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

baggy in the wild

  • The cap was not originally baggy as evidenced by photographs of early players.

    Baggy green

  • Sometimes, rather than tight-fitting, the cricket cap comes in a baggy variety, that is always kept in place by elastic.

    Cricket cap

  • Harem pants or harem trousers are baggy, long pants caught in at the ankle.

    Harem pants

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • bag