Does anyone else have a feeling that the word peg can be used to mean "hit"? Like, " He pegged her in the arm," or, more specifically, to hit someone with something thrown at them? Like, "He pegged her with a snowball."? I feel like I've heard that before but can't find any dictionary definitions that really bear that out. There's one in Merriam Webster that says "to throw," but that doesn't seem quite right. I'm not thinking of "He pegged the snowball," but rather "He pegged her with the snowball."
Anyway, I'm wondering if this slangy sounding use might possibly come from Spanish. I was learning about the verb pegar yesterday. I'm familiar with it in the context of working in the nursery at church and the other, Spanish speaking, teachers, telling the kids not to "pegar" each other. Then yesterday, a friend gave us a pot of leftover soup but told us not to heat it up in that same pot because it would "pegar." I was really confused and asked my husband about it, and he said it meant that it would stick to the pot. So I looked it up, and apparently it means "hit," "stick," and a thousand other things, including, my husband says, to have been a hit or have been popular, like "In the 80s, that hairstyle really pegó." Interesting word.
