juggles

[Debz]

Ok, here's one for ya. My grandma was talking to me about a certain subject, and she used a word that I have never heard used in this way before. All I'm going to tell you is that it's a plural noun, not a verb. Juggles. I'm guessing it's an Ozark thing.

[Andrew Dalby]

There's a lot of juggling in the Ozarks, according to Google, but most of it is the juggling of schedules.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives me 'blocks of timber cut to length.' That's guess number one.

Guess number two, thinking about the British slang term 'jugs', is 'breasts'. Hope this guess doesn't offend your grandma.

[hsargent]

I need more clues .... can you give us the sentence with juggles? I can only think of it as a verb.

[Erik_Kowal]

In line with Andrew's surmise, I suspect that Debz' grandmother was talking about what Derek and Clive (a.k.a. Dudley Moore and Peter Cook) once referred to as 'busty substances'. Incidentally, there are only 299 jug-jiggling days remaining till Christmas.

[minjeff]

I did a quick google search and I see it used (besides as "Juggles the Clown")in reference to the hit(punch/kick) combo's of video games. Is your grandmother a fighter Debz?

[Debz]

They are the shavings of wood that come off of a railroad tie that is being shaped by broad axes. (an extinct activity) My grandma said that people used to go to the site where the ties were being shaped and pick up the "juggles" to use them for kindling.

[Erik_Kowal]

OK, Debz. So your grandmother was not talking about breasts after all. But tell me -- why were you so coy about the actual subject in the beginning?

[Debz]

I was in the middle of trying to change it, but my sister kept calling and interrupting, so I finally gave up and left it. I didn't think it was a real word, since I couldn't find it in the dictionary. Most of the people around here don't know what it is, either.

[hsargent]

I also can't think of anything that sounds like "juggles" which might have been the word.

[Ken Greenwald]

Deborah, JUGGLE is listed in the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which specialized in these hard-to-find regional words. It appears as a noun (both singular and plural) and as a verb:

JUGGLE noun [variation of ‘joggle’ a notch in a piece of building material into which another piece is fitted]: 1) [1900] The straight cut into the heart of a tree when felling. 2) A large chip hewn from a log, especially in the making of railroad ties. South Midland U.S., Cf. juggle verb.

<1902 “JUGGLE . . . Chip or block scored from timber”—‘Dialect Notes,’ 2.237, southern Illinois>

<1953 “Ozarks, JUGGLES. . . Very large chips, seen about the camps of woodsmen who make railroad ties. To box the juggles is to cut these chips loose from a tie that has been notched, after which it is smoothed up with the broadaxe.”—‘Down in the Holler’ by Randolph & Wilson, page 257>

<1954 “Large chips cut off logs.”—‘The Harder Collection,’ central west Tennessee>

<circa 1960 “JUGGLES. . .Large chips and slabs from making crossties.”—‘Wilson College,’ central southern Kentucky>

<1973 “The chips left when hewing ties were JUGGLES.”—‘DARE File,’ Ozarks (as of circa 1910)>

<1987 “He [= a hewer of crossties] works his way down the length of the log knocking off the sections between the notches. These sections are called JUGGLES. He remembers when his parents would send the smaller kids to pick these up for firewood.”—‘Foxfire,’ Winter, page 210>

JUGGLE verb, hence verbal noun JUGGLING: To score or hew timber, especially in the making of railroad ties.

<1902 “JUGGLE. . . To score timber before hewing.”—‘Dialect Note,’ 2.237, southern Illinois>

<1986 “JUGGLING—in making crossties.”—‘LAGS Concordance,’ Pederson, 1 informant, central southern Tennessee>

<1988 “Peter Gott, a master log cabin builder from Marshal County, N.C. has told me that the hewing process was sometimes called ‘JUGGLING’ around here.”—‘DARE File,’ central west North Carolina.>

The unanswered question, of course, is why the chips are called JUGGLES, and my guess is that the answer is revealed in the above definition by the fact that the noun is said to be a variation of JOGGLE. The verb JOGGLE (from JOG) also meant “to move to and fro with a succession of short jerky movements.” And this, it seems to me, might have been the motion of those hewers of railroad ties as they worked their way along the log with their axes – the action giving its name to the chips produced.

Incidentally, I have a copy of Down in the Holler – A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech by Randolph & Wilson, which you might find interesting. And it’s where the above 1953 definition came from. The book is long out of print, but if you do some Googling you might be able to locate a used copy.
____________________

Ken G – March 1, 2006

[Debz]

Thanks! I'll have to find that book. Surprisingly, our local library doesn't have much on the subject.

[hsargent]

What a great find, Ken! How many regional words die out.

We did a collection at our museum of words and phrases that no longer exist. A couple as examples are: party-lines, test patterns, florascopes.

[Debz]

By the way, I told my grandma about the whole "juggles" thing, and she really likes it. She said she wants that book too.

I'm thankful for whoever started this website. It's great!!

[waterworks]

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl ... Ozark+Folk

Debbie, here is the book on ebay. "Down in the Holler-Gallery of Ozark Folk". Since you won't give me your password to paypal you can bid on it yourself.
Debz's mom.

[Debz]

already bought it from amazon, cheaper. waterworks??