[Ads-l] peg

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sat Mar 11 19:47:05 UTC 2017


On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 3:27 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In Russell Smith’s "You think English is hard? Try Tuyuca” (
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/you-think-english-is-hard-try-tuyuca/
> article4311579/), he discusses the journalism term “peg” meaning an
> underlying news story for an article.
>
> Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peg <https://en.wiktionary.org/
> wiki/peg>) has “a support; a reason’ a pretext” giving “a peg to hang a
> claim upon” as an example. I think that could be widened just slightly to
> include the journalism meaning or perhaps a separate definition is more
> appropriate.
>
> The online Oxford Dictionaries (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
> definition/peg) do not have such a definition but do have “a peg to hang
> something on” as an idiom.
>

Oxford Dictionaries does have "news peg" ("an aspect or angle of a story
that makes it newsworthy"):

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/news_peg

Also in Random House and Dictionary.com (which uses Random House
definitions):

http://dictionary.infoplease.com/news-peg
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/news-peg

--bgz

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