The verb fag means “to work hard” and especially in the participial adjective, “to work to exhaustion,” as in I’m all fagged out. In British public schoolboy jargon, underclassmen had to fag for, that is “be servants for,” upperclassmen; those who had to do those chores were called fags. Fag is also a rather old-fashioned slang word for “cigarette” in both Britain and America. Faggot is a taboo slang term for a male homosexual, and fag is a clipped noun form of it, also taboo. A fagot or faggot is a small bundle, usually of sticks to be used for firewood, and a verb meaning “to make such a bundle.” Faggoting (spelled with one g or two) is an openwork embroidery stitch and the embroidery it produces. The embroidery senses and variant spellings of these words are Standard; the homosexual senses are taboo, and the rest are either slang or at best Conversational.
