Definition of "fag end" []

• The frayed end of a length of cloth or rope. (noun)
• An inferior or worn-out remnant. (noun)
• The last part: "the fag end of this crisis-ridden century” ( Wallace Irwin, Jr.) (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "My uncle Toby and the corporal had been accoutred both some time, when my father and mother enter’d, and the clock striking eleven, were that moment in motion to sally forth — but the account of this is worth more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth (Alluding to the first edition.) volume of such a work as this. —"
• "She carried "a fine Horace, which repeatedly annoyed me by tumbling in the dirt, a volume of Sully's Memoirs, and a little fag end of Spinoza, being his Tractat upon the Old Testament.""