Q: I’m curious about when the word “tag” became used in “tag along.” Is this an American usage or did it originate earlier than that?
A: Early versions of “tag along” were first recorded in England in the 17th century. But the usage ultimately comes from medieval times, when “tags” referred to the ribbon-like strips of cloth in the decoratively slashed hem of a skirt.
As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the original “tag” was “one of the narrow, often pointed, laciniæ or pendent pieces made by slashing the skirt of a garment.”
The earliest Oxford citation is from a 1402 entry in Political Poems and Songs Related to English History (1861), edited by Thomas Wright:
“Of suche wide clothing, tateris and tagges, it hirtith myn hert hevyly.”
(Chaucer denounced the fashion as “degise endentynge” [ostentatious notching] and a “wast of clooth in vanitee” in “The Parson’s Tale,” late 1300s.)
The use of “tag” as a verb emerged in the early 16th century. The OED defines “to tag” as “to furnish or mark with or as with a tag.”
The dictionary’s first example, which we’ve expanded here, is from a 1503 entry in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland (1900), edited by James Balfour Paul:
“For ane curpal and ane tee [one crupper strap and one T attachment] to the harnes sadill, tagging, mending, and stopping [padding] of the samyn.”
In the 17th century, the dictionary says, the verb took on the sense of “to trail or drag behind; to follow closely, follow in one’s train,” and is “frequently const. [constructed with] after, along, (a)round, on.”
The dictionary’s earliest example, which uses “tag on,” is from The Plain-Dealer (1676), a comedy of manners by the English playwright William Wycherley: “I hate a harness, and will not tag on in a faction, kissing my leader behind, that another slave may do the like to me.”
The earliest use of “tag along” that we’ve found is from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884): “Tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger.”
Oxford’s first citation is from More Fables (1900), a collection of short stories by the American humorist George Ade: “The men Volunteered to help, and two or three wanted to Tag along, but Clara drove them back.”
In the mid-20th century, “tag-along” (later “tagalong”) appeared as an adjective describing “that which is towed or trailed behind something else,” the OED says.
The dictionary’s first example appeared during World War II: “Evidence of trailed, or ‘tag-along,’ bombs still is scanty” (The Baltimore Sun, Jan. 21, 1944).
The adjective was later “applied to an uninvited follower,” as in this Oxford example from a Canadian newspaper: “The small trailer snug beside it like a tagalong pup” (The Islander, Victoria, BC, June 10, 1973).
When the noun “tagalong” first appeared, the OED says, it referred to “an unwelcome, uninvited, or neglected companion.” It cites the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961), which has this example: “felt honored to be a tagalong tolerated by the older boys.”
Standard dictionaries now define the noun as someone who follows the lead of another. In British English, it can also mean something that’s attached to and pulled behind something else, like a child’s bicycle attached to an adult’s.
Here’s an example of the follower sense from Merriam-Webster: “His little sister was sometimes a tagalong on his outings with his friends.” And here’s a bicycle example from Longman: “The tagalong attaches to an adult’s bicycle.”
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