Lollygagging

I am having that kind of morning, not doing anything in particular, hanging about, doing this and that because it’s raining.

To lollygag or lallygag means to dawdle, loiter, fool around. It can also mean to neck or smooch in public (which I didn’t know), as well as to chatter incessantly.

My dictionary (Webster) says the origin is unknown, but according to an on line source, the Oxford English Dictionary says the word comes from ‘loll’ to waste time, and ‘gag’ to deceive or fool. On yahoo’s answer.com it gives an example of usage from  an Iowa paper in 1868, “The lascivious lolly-gagging lumps of licentiousness who disgrace the common decencies of life...”

In Britain the term ‘lolly’ refers to a lollipop or ice cream popsicle, so lollygagging likely would have negative connotations there.

Lolly is also a slang term for money, and that’s where things get really interesting. Most of us have heard of terms such as ‘buck’ and ‘bread’ as slang for money, but did you know about frogskins (maybe because some money is green?), duckets, scrilla, mopuses, and wonga? Let’s lollygag about money some more. In Australia a ten dollar bill is apparently called a blue tongue because it is predominantly green. In the United Kingdom, ready money is called rhino. Whenever I read British books that mention their money, I have to get out the dictionary and sometimes I’ve made a chart (for some of Dorothy Sayers’ mystery novels). A quid is another word for a pound, a bob is a shilling, and six-pence a tanner. Most confusing!

Back to lollygagging. I wonder if there are people out there who invent words either on purpose or by accident? Certainly my grandson does. I just got off Skype with him and he was inventing goblin words for milk and the like. In one of my favourite books by Connie Willis (bellwether), she speculates about the origins of fads and suggests that there are people who are sort of fad originators and magnets, so that whatever they wear or do becomes picked up by others around them. In our increasingly connected world it’s not hard to spread a saying or a fad nearly instantly. As I’ve probably said before, we do indeed live in a global village.