shrag

plural shrags

1. A twig cut from a tree.

present singular third person shrags · participle present shragging · participle past shragged · past shragged

1. uncommonTo cut or lop; to trim or prune (something, such as a tree).

   Twygges or boughes of trees cut of[f], or shragged, […] Shragge vnder so that the sunne maye come to the ground, […]

   1552, Hulget

   2 more examples

   About 350 loads of excellent beech timber, with the felling fagots, 1,500 shragging fagots, 5 lots of small ash, 15 large ash, and 22 large elm trees, [...] will be sold by auction.

   1900 December 1, The Oxford Times, section 2

   It is raining today in Steubenville. / Blessed be the dead whom the rain rains upon. / And damned the living who have their few days. / And blessed your thorned face, Your shragged November, / Your leaf, / Lost.

   James Wright, Rain / Edward Thomas (poem), quoted in Above the River: The Complete Poems (1990), page 19