hug.
A close embrace, especially when charged with an emotion such as affection, joy, relief, lust, anger, aggression, compassion, or the like, as opposed to being characterized by formality, equivocation or ambivalence (a half-embrace).
Meaning & usage
A close embrace, especially when charged with an emotion such as affection, joy, relief, lust, anger, aggression, compassion, or the like, as opposed to being characterized by formality, equivocation or ambivalence (a half-embrace).
A particular grip in wrestling.
Where this word comes from
From earlier hugge (“to embrace, clasp with the arms”) (1560), probably representing a conflation of huck (“to crouch, huddle down”) and Old Norse hugga (“to comfort, console”), from hugr (“mind, heart, thought”), from Proto-Germanic *hugiz (“mind, thought, sense”), cognate with Icelandic hugga (“to comfort”), Old English hyġe (“thought”) (whence high (Etymology 2)).
To crouch; to huddle as with cold.
To cling closely together.
To embrace by holding closely, especially in the arms.
Billy hugged Danny until he felt better.
They hugged for what seemed like an eternity.
To stay close to.
to hug the shore, to hug the coastline
To hold fast; to cling to; to cherish.
Where this word comes from
From earlier hugge (“to embrace, clasp with the arms”) (1560), probably representing a conflation of huck (“to crouch, huddle down”) and Old Norse hugga (“to comfort, console”), from hugr (“mind, heart, thought”), from Proto-Germanic *hugiz (“mind, thought, sense”), cognate with Icelandic hugga (“to comfort”), Old English hyġe (“thought”) (whence high (Etymology 2)).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.