| 释义 |
old lag, n. slang.
[f. old a. + lag n.5]
1. A former convict or ‘lag’, esp. one previously transported or sentenced to penal servitude. Austral.
1812J. H. Vaux Vocab. Flash Lang. in Mem. (1819) II. 193 Old lag, a man or woman who has been transported, is so called on returning home, by those who are acquainted with the secret. 1853A. Kinloch Murray River 19 They were probably ci devant convicts, or, as they are here termed, ‘old lags’. 1935H. McCrae My Father 73 Ulladulla..was a convict settlement, populated by timber-getters, old lags, bullock-drivers. 1977B. Scott My Uncle Arch 48 Another old lag..used to make dud two-bobs for a sideline.
2. A hardened or habitual prisoner; a recidivist.
1929Times 6 July 15/2 Sir Henry Dickens..fully agrees that the ‘old lag’ is irreclaimable. 1949A. Wilson Wrong Set 131 God knows what sort of awful snobbery the presence of a ‘public schoolman’ arouses among the old lags, or the warders too for that matter. 1971Auden Academic Graffiti No. 51 He would hire old lags To carry his bags. 1986A. Powell Fisher King xxiv. 150 One is always reading of the overcrowding in prisons, how young offenders are confined with old lags. |