drag [ME] The word drag comes either from Old English dragan or the Old Norse root draga, which shares a common Germanic heritage with draw [OE], draught [ME], the type of cart known as a dray [LME], and possibly drudge [ME]. The sense ‘a boring or tiresome person or thing’ developed in the early 19th century from the idea of an attachment that drags and hinders progress. The cumbersomeness of contemporary women’s dress may also be behind the use of drag for ‘women’s clothing worn by a man’, which is recorded from the 1870s. A street has been a drag since the middle of the 19th century. A description of London life in 1851 records a woman ‘whose husband has got a month for “griddling in the main drag” (singing in the high street)’. The term later became better known in the USA, especially in the main drag.