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Jiggery-Pokery
deaconB
744 Posts
(Offline)
1
2015/06/27 - 9:10pm

Dictionary.com lists 3 definitions for jiggery-pokery:

noun, Chiefly British
1.  trickery, hocus-pocus; fraud; humbug.
2. sly, underhanded action.
3. manipulation: After a little jiggery-pokery, the engine started.
 
Which definition do you suppose Antonin Scalia had in mind when he wrote "The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery involves other parts of the Act that purportedly presuppose the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges." 
I can't really see any real difference between the three. 
 
I have always used jiggery-pokey, rather than jiggery-pokery.  I suppose that was my illiteracy.
 
Ron Draney
721 Posts
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2
2015/06/28 - 12:45am

Definition #3 doesn't require dishonesty, merely the application of a trick, perhaps non-obvious, to get it to work. Like jiggling the handle on the screen door before you can open it.

Guest
3
2015/06/28 - 2:06pm

I agree with Ron Draney regarding definition #3. But don't really see any distinction between the other two definitions. #2 seems like a generalization that would include all the specific examples in #1. But then, that's from Dictionary.com. I'd like to see what the OED gives for the definition of "jigger-pokery (pokey)" but don't have a copy or online access. Merriam-Webster gives this definition, which pretty much corresponds to #2 from Dictionary.com. And FreeDictionary.com provides this definition, again very close to #2, but also notes it's primarily a British term.

Personally, I'd never heard it before Scalia's rant.

EmmettRedd
859 Posts
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4
2015/06/28 - 4:36pm

The OxED has only one definition:
Etymology: Compare Scots joukery-pawkery (see joukery n. Compounds).

colloq.

Deceitful or dishonest ‘manipulation’; hocus-pocus, humbug.

1893 G. E. Dartnell & E. H. Goddard Gloss. Words Wilts. 86.

1926 E. F. Spanner Naviators ix. 104, I thought..it was some more jiggery-pokery to keep down the expenditure this financial year.

1943 Mind 52 304, I share with Gray the feeling that there's some jiggery pokery here and that what you are doing is not what one tends to feel you are doing.

1973 G. Mitchell Murder of Busy Lizzie ii. 23 Business reasons could make any alliance respectable..so long as there was no jiggery-pokery.

And, here is the Scottish entry:

joukery-pawkery n. [pawky adj.] clever trickery, jugglery, legerdemain.

1686 G. Stuart Joco-serious Disc. 59 Deil fetcht was it but Jewkrypawkry.

1755 R. Forbes tr. Ovid Ajax 11 The sin o' Nauplius..His jouckry-pauckry finding out, To weir did him compel.

1816 Scott Black Dwarf ix*, in Tales of my Landlord 1st Ser. I. 206 That there has been some jookery-paukery of Satan's in a' this.

1871 W. Alexander Johnny Gibb xxxvii. 261 There's been mair joukry-pawkry wi' Dawvid nor ye're awaar o'.

deaconB
744 Posts
(Offline)
5
2015/06/28 - 5:43pm

Heimhenge said
Personally, I'd never heard it before Scalia's rant.

I'd never heard of it with that extra R.

I have his image in my mind of someone jiggering a haphazard pile, that is, jostling it so it forms a more stable configuration.  A familly might jigger the family budget in order to get canning supplies rather than to wait until the Social Security arrives on the 3rd (and all the garden vegetables have gone rotten.)  And in order to get that haphazard pile to more readily settle, it might be worthwhile poking it with a stiff arm.

But a poker is a serious weapon.  Poke Uncle Louie, and you wake up for supper.  Use a poker on Uncle Louie and he's going to the hospital, or perhaps to the morgue.  Jiggery pokey is innocent rearrangement.  Jiggery-pokery is malicious and criminal.  Google has 9830 cites for higgery-pokey, and 124,000 for jiggery-pokery, but I wonder how many it had two weeks ago.  I suspect most of those 9830 were intentional two-syllable "pokey" rather than three-syllable "pokery" references.  Undoubtedly, the oppressive weight of "jiggery-pokery orthodoxy will crush jiggery-pokey as an idiom.

If his mother had named him Anthony, rather than Antonin, he might have turned out differently.

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