wag hemp

present singular third person wags hemp · participle present wagging hemp · participle past wagged hemp · past wagged hemp

1. To be hanged.

   1 more example

   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.

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

   Synonyms: stretch hemp, dance on a rope, dance on nothing, dance the hempen jig, dance the Tyburn jig, dance upon nothing, dangle, hang