hug

/hʌɡ/

hug

English Noun Top 2,567

American (Lessac) (medium)

Female 0.5s

American (Amy) (medium)

Female 0.7s

American (Ryan) (medium)

Male 0.2s

Definition

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").

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)).