To let the cat out of the bag, phr. (familiar).—To disclose a trick or secret.—See Cat.
To put one in a bag, phr. (old).—Usage and derivation explained, as far as known, in quotation.
1662. Fuller, Worthies, Cardigan (ii., 579). They (the Welsh) had a kind of play wherein the stronger who prevailed put the weaker into a sack; and hence we have borrowed our English by-word to express such, betwixt whom there is apparent odds of strength. 'He is able to put him up in a bagge.' [d.]
1676. Earl of Rochester, Hist. of Insipids, st. 14. Had haughty Holms but call'd in Spragg, Hans had been put into a bag.
To put or get one's head in a bag, phr. (printers').—A 'bag' here signifies a pot of beer; hence, to drink. Also in use amongst seafaring men.
1887. Sat. Review, 14 May, p. 700. It is slang, and yet purely trade slang, when one printer says of another that he has got his head in the bag.
To turn to bag and wallet (old).—To become a beggar.
Verb. (popular).—1. To secure for oneself. Most probably a mere extension of the colloquial sporting usage of to bag (properly, to put or enclose in a bag), in the sense of to seize, capture, entrap, or otherwise bring within one's reach.
1880. Mortimer Collins, Thoughts in my Garden, vol. I., p. 163. The word beggar itself is from bag—meaning a man who carries a bag; and modern commercial slang reproduces the phrase, saying of a clever man of business that he has bagged a good thing.
2. To steal; or to catch (a thief or man). Sometimes rendered by to collar (q.v.).
1881. Moore, Fudge Family in Paris, VI. Who can help to bag a few, When Sidmouth wants a death or two?
1862. Farrar, St. Winifred's, ch. xxxv. They would not call it stealing but bagging a thing, or, at the worst, 'cribbing it'—concealing the villainy under a new name.
3. (old).—To beget; to conceive; to breed. Also to be bagged. This usage dates from about a.d. 1400, and was colloquial until about the middle of the seventeenth century. Warner [in Alb. Eng. VI., 148] has the line
Well, Venus shortly bagged, and ere long was Cupid bred.
To get baggy, phr. (common).—Said of clothes when loosened by the stretching which arises from wear and tear. Trousers get baggy at the knees.
Bag and Baggage, phr. (common).—To clear one out bag and baggage is to get quit of one entirely. A deprecatory expression indicating complete riddance.
Bag and Bottle, subs. phr. (old).—Food and drink. The former from being carried in a bag as by beggars and vagrants; the latter also being of similar derivation.
1671. Eachard, Observations. An ill-contriving rascal that in his younger years should choose to lug the bag and the bottle a mile or two to school; and to bring home only a small bit of Greek or Latin most magisterially construed.
Baggage. Heavy baggage, subs. phr. (old).—1. Women and children.—Grose.
2. Baggage is also a fami-
