hug
Plural: hugs
Noun
- a tight or amorous embrace
- "come here and give me a big hug"
- A close embrace, especially when charged with an emotion such as affection, joy, relief, lust, anger, aggression, compassion, and the like, as opposed to being characterized by formality, equivocation or ambivalence (a half-embrace or "little hug").
- A particular grip in wrestling.
Verb
Verb Forms: hugged, hugging, hugs
- To clasp tightly in the arms; to embrace.
- squeeze (someone) tightly in your arms, usually with fondness
- "Hug me, please"
- "He hugged her close to him"
- fit closely or tightly
- "The dress hugged her hips"
- To crouch; to huddle as with cold.
- To cling closely together.
- To embrace by holding closely, especially in the arms.
- To stay close to.
- To hold fast; to cling to; to cherish.
Examples
- Billy hugged Danny until he felt better.
- The player decided to HUG the triple word score, not letting anyone else use it.
- They hugged for what seemed like an eternity.
- to hug the shore, to hug the coastline
Origin / Etymology
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)).
Synonyms
bosom, clinch, embrace, squeeze, accoll, adhere, cleave, coll, hunker, squat, stick, stoop, treasure
Scrabble Score: 7
hug: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordhug: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
hug: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary