TAGÜ

noun and verb (Youth Culture) In hip hop culture, noun: A graffito, usually consisting of a decorated nickname, word, or initial, made by a graffiti artist as a personal 'signature'. transitive verb: To decorate (a place or object) with graffiti; to leave (one's graffiti signature) in a public place. Etymology: Another figurative use of tag in the sense of 'label'. History and Usage: Graffiti tags first started to appear in the streets of New York during the first half of the seventies, but the practice of tagging did not spread far outside large American cities until the mid eighties. Then it was the popularization of hip-hop culture as a whole that involved youngsters outside the US in constructing these highly decorated nicknames, often on very visible public buildings. The person who paints a tag is known as a tagger; graffiti artists often work in teams or crews and a particular tag can belong to a tag team or tag crew rather than to an individual tag artist. A more elaborate graffito is known as a piece (short for masterpiece). The proliferation of 'writing'...along with its spectacular development from scrawled felt-tip 'tags' on city walls to spray-can 'pieces'...has been a visible part of New York's daily life. New Yorker 26 Mar. 1984, p. 98 Vandals have imported graffiti materials from America to ape New York 'tag teams'--gangs who vie to leave their personal trademarks in daring or eye-catching places. Daily Telegraph 3 May 1990, p. 4