Definition of "hag"

And that olde hag that with a staffe his staggering lymbes dooth stay

1565, Arthur Golding (tr.), The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ouidius Nasos worke intitled Metamorphosis‎, London: William Seres, The Fovrthe Booke

Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, page 11

The elder women were literally "old hags" - lean and shrivelled, and excessively ugly.

1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 67

I don't plan to stop drinking. But... I don't wanna forget. I can't turn away anymore. So, if I'm gonna die, well, it might as well be driving my sword through the heart of that murderous hag.

2017, Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, directed by Taika Waititi, Thor: Ragnarok, spoken by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson)

Fourth of the cursed knot of hags is she / Or rather all the other three in one; / Hell's shop of slaughter she does oversee, / And still assist the execution

1646, Richard Crashaw, “Sospetto D' Herode”, in Steps to the Temple, stanza 37

Flamma lambentes (or those we call Haggs) are made of Sweat or some other Vapour issuing out of the Head; a not-unusuall sight amongst us when we ride by night in the Summer time: They are extinguisht, like flames, by shaking the Horse Mains

1656, Thomas White, Peripateticall Institutions‎, page 149

This said, he led me over hoults and hags; / Through thorns and bushes scant my legs I drew

1845, Edward Fairfax (tr.), Godfrey of Bulloigne; or, The Recovery of Jerusalem: Done into English Heroical Verse‎, page 168

And they likewise ordained […] that all the warp should be thrown into the Common wayes, to fill up haggs and lakes, where need was, upon a great penalty, where it should ly neer the Common rode.

1662, Sir William Dugdale, The History of Imbanking and Drayning of Divers Fenns and Marshes‎, page 292

The shallow slow-running groughs fed the hag with a trickle of coppery water.

2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 101

How are Superstitious Men Hagg'd Out of their Wits and Senses, with the Fancy of Omens, Forebodings, Old Wives Tales, and Visions

1692, Roger L'Estrange (tr.), Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: with Morals and Reflexions‎, page 149