Other forms: tugs, tugging, tugged
To tug is to pull with one short, sharp movement. A child tugging at your sleeve in a shop, a dog tugging on the lead, the tug you give a rope to check it will hold.
The noun is the same word: give it a tug, one hard tug and the door came open. Tug takes at when the thing does not move — she tugged at the drawer — and no preposition when it does: he tugged the blanket off the bed. Feelings get tugged too, and the phrase tug at the heartstrings means to pull straight at someone's pity. A tug is also a small, powerful boat that pushes and pulls big ships in and out of harbour, short for tugboat. And a tug of war is both the rope contest on sports day and any two-sided struggle: a tug of war over the children, a tug of war between the two departments.
1verbtugTo pull something with a short, sharp movement.
“She tugged the curtain across and the room went dark.”
2nounshortA short, sharp pull.
“He felt a tug on the fishing line and sat up.”
3nounsmallA small, powerful boat used to tow or push larger ships.
“Two tugs pushed the ferry away from the quay.”
Tug goes back through Middle English tuggen to Old English togian, 'to tow', and behind that Proto-Germanic *tugōną, 'to draw, pull'. The root is Proto-Indo-European *dewk-, 'to draw, pull, lead', which also stands behind Latin dūcō, 'to lead'. Tug and tow are the plain English end of a very large family.
Proto-Indo-European
*dewk- — to draw, pull; to lead
Proto-Germanic
*tugōną — to draw, pull
Proto-West Germanic
*togōn
Old English
togian — to tow
Middle English
tuggen
English, today
tug
From Middle English tuggen, from Old English togian (“to tow”), from Proto-West Germanic togōn, from Proto-Germanic tugōną (“to draw, pull”), from Proto-Indo-European dewk- (“to draw, pull; to lead”). 2 Cognate with German zögern (“to hesitate, pause”), Faroese and Icelandic toga (“to pull”), French touer (“to tow, tug a ship”); also Welsh dwyn (“to steal; to take; to bring to”), Latin dūcō (“to conduct, guide, lead; to take; to draw, pull; to consider, think; to prolong; to march; to forge”), Ancient Greek δαδύσσομαι (“to be distracted”), Albanian nduk (“to pluck out, pull out, tear”), ckb دۆشین (“to milk”), kmr dotin, doşîn, دۆشین (“to milk”), os ду́цын (“to milk”), ps لوشل (“to milk; to extort”), Persian دوشیدن, دوشتن, دوختن (“to milk”). Related to tow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA