Translation Tuesday: Shagging!

It is time for another Translation Tuesday! There are so many words and phrase to pick from when it comes to Southern talk. Lets talk today about what it means to SHAG! So, when I moved down here about 11 years ago, a popular movie out at the time was Austin  Powers, or the whole series of those films were out about the English spy who was all about his sex drive . Either way, every time I heard “shagging” I thought it was referring to sex. So when flyers around my college campus were advertising things around campus about “shagging at midnight” or “shagging on the quad” I was a little taken aback. Clearly I was still a little naïve as a freshman thinking all of these people all around me were obsessed with sex! And were blatant about it too! Granted, it was a college campus, so there were probably plenty of people obsessed with sex, but that isn’t want these ads were talking about… they were talking about shagging southern style, not British J  

In the South, the shag is a style of dancing! It reminds me of swing dancing, except slower and more relaxed. Not a lot of shaking or swing of the upper body, but slow and even paced swaying with a fair bit of footwork and some lovely turnouts. As I have been told, it originated somewhere along the coast in the mid-twentieth century and is usually danced to beach music. Beach music is usually a mid-tempo melody that is just super relaxing and makes you want to sway and have fun… my go to example is Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. It is not a rock song, it is just a great and standard beat, that just makes you want to sway. It is actually the state dance of bothCarolinas, if I am not mistaken.

So all of those ads about shagging at midnight or shagging on the quad are all about DANCING! Even though I have been down here for years, it is still fun to watch the reaction that people have when they are not from around here and someone starts talking about how they can’t wait to shag that night! So now you know… shagging in the South is dancing! Happy translation Tuesday, y’all!