wagger-pagger-bagger

English

WOTD – 21 March 2026
A wastepaper basket, humorously known as a wagger-pagger-bagger.

Etymology

From wastepaper basket, humorously modified by adding -agger to the first letters of waste, paper, and basket; compare -er (suffix forming informal or slang equivalents of words).[1][2]

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌwæɡə ˌpæɡə ˈbæɡə/
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˌwæɡəɹ ˌpæɡəɹ ˈbæɡəɹ/
  • Audio (General American):(file)
  • Audio (Australia):(file)
  • Rhymes: -æɡə(ɹ)
  • Hyphenation: wag‧ger-pag‧ger-bag‧ger

Noun

wagger-pagger-bagger (plural wagger-pagger-baggers)

  1. (originally Oxford University slang, now British slang, humorous, dated) A wastepaper basket.
    Synonyms: wagger, wagger-pagger; (also otherwise humorous) circular file, circular filing cabinet; more at Thesaurus:waste bin
    • [1916, E[dward] V[errall] Lucas, “Of Slang—English and American”, in Cloud and Silver, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 96:
      When young Oxford suddenly began to substitute "er" for the ordinary termination of a word, it was not making slang so much as diversifying and idiotising conversation. Thus a bedmaker was transformed to a "bedder," breakfast to "brekker," and the waste-paper basket, by a desperate effort, became the "wagger pagger bagger"—to be subsequently surpassed when the Prince of Wales [later Edward VIII] arrived at Magdalen, and was known as the "Pragger Wagger": […]]
    • [1927 September, Beverley Nichols, “Philip Guedalla, or The Importance of Waste-paper Baskets”, in Are They the Same at Home? Being a Series of Bouquets Diffidently Distributed […], New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 119:
      Waste-paper baskets – (I remember certain earnest youths at Oxford who used to call them wagger-pagger-baggers) – are to Philip Guedalla one of the most essential perquisites of the man of letters.]
    • 1932 February 18, “Oxford Student Life Interests I.R.C.”, in Betty Ramsay, editor, The Arrow, volume 11, number 15, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Students of the Pennsylvania College for Women, page 4, column 2:
      One of the first things an American has to do upon reaching Oxford is to learn the language or as we would say, the slang. One does not eat breakfast, but "brekker," the regular visit to the dean is called "doing the dean," bathing is "tubbing." A "Fresher," (freshman) throws his scratch paper into the "wagger pagger bagger" not the wastebasket as in America.
    • 1947 (date written), John Dighton, The Happiest Days of Your Life: A Farce in Three Acts, London: Samuel French, published 1951, →OCLC, Act II, page 34:
      (He takes the flowers from the vase.) If you don't mind, therefore, I shall deposit them in the wagger-pagger-bagger. (He drops the flowers into the waste-paper basket.)
    • 2009, Peter [J. M.] McEwan, “Early Days”, in To Catch the Moon from the Bottom of the Sea: A Memoir, Ballater, Aberdeenshire: Glengarden Press, →ISBN, page 22:
      'Jumbo' White, rotund, merry and bright, retained our attention prancing around the schoolroom bringing history to life as he described the good guys and lambasted the villains. He was a master of the lampoon, a wagger-pagger-bagger need never be a waste paper basket again.

Derived terms

Translations

References

  1. ^ “wagger, n.2”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2025.
  2. ^ “wagger, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary, 2011–present.

Further reading

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