Citations:fiz-gig

See also: Citations:fizgig

English citations of fix-gig, fizz-gig, and fisgig

a disparaging term for a girl or woman; a frivolous woman, fond of running about or doing something else unbecoming or scandalous

• 1580, Tusser, Husb., 169.

  Let fisgig be taught to shut doore after taile.

• 1900, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary: D-G, page 374, quoting an old Nursery rhyme (I.W.1):

  Robin was so angry, he flew up on a twig, Saying, fie upon you, fie upon you, little fiz-gig.

a kind of firework made of damp gunpowder; a squib

• (Can we date this quote?), Waugh, Winter Fire, 26:

  They whuzzed round like a fizz-gig.

a person employed by police to entrap another person

• 1907, The Lone Hand, page 523:

  The employment of "fiz-gigs"—men engaged by detectives to tempt discharged prisoners to commit specified felones, whereby they fell into the hands that had directed the temptation—was tne a common practice. […] The report of Mr. Francis Longmore and his colleagues may indeed have tended to diminish “fiz-gigging” by calling public opprobrium to the evil.

• 2017, Clive Emsley, Police Detectives in History, 1750–1950, Routledge (→ISBN)

  George would seem to fit the very type of a 'fiz-gig', 'paid to start the prey which the expectant detective captures without a trouble or inconvenience'. Being paid meant not only getting a share of a reward but a right to negotiate future charges: […]

whirligig, a device which whirls with a whizzing sound in the air or water

• 1862, Jonathan Rigg, A Dictionary of the Sunda Language of Java, page 226:

  Koléchér, a fiz-gig or wind-mill set near humahs or Sawahs. The natives take a great deal of interest in this play thing and are fond of having it near their growing paddy.

a kind of fishing-spear used in Australia

• 1799, The Monthly Epitome, page 244:

  Every precaution was used to guard against a breach of this friendly and desirable intercourse, by strictly prohibiting every person from depriving them of their spears, fiz gigs, ...

• 1806, Thomas Smith, The Wonders of Nature and Art, page 231:

  The natives on the sea coast subsist principally upon fish, which the men usually catch with fiz-gigs, and the women with hooks and lines.

• 1811, George Paterson, The History of New South Wales, from Its First Discovery to the Present Time, page 104:

  […] the men killing them with the fiz-gig, while the females use the hook and line. The fiz-gig is made of the wattle; has a joint in it, fastened by gum; is from fifteen to twenty feet in length, and armed with four barbed prongs; the barb being a piece of bone secured by gum.

• 1885, W. W. Breese, The Cornucopia: Or, Horn of Plenty, page 642:

  The dusky fishermen, standing in the canoes and bending over, now to this side, now that, plunge down their spears and fiz-gigs , rarely failing to bring up a fish of one sort or another. The struggling victim shaken off into the bottom of the [boat].

• 1959, William Hart-Smith, Poems of Discovery, Sydney : Robertson

  Hunter to Portland: “In addition to their natural vicious propensities . . . which is to rape the convict women into insensibility, murder the natives on sight, steal their canoes, smash their fishing fiz-gigs, trip up black women and fix them on the spot like animals […] "

• 2005, Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact, Cambridge University Press (→ISBN), page 214:

  ... and when he was going away he left a large bundle of spears, fiz-gigs, [fish spears] and various other articles under Governor Phillip's care. The next day the party of Australians who had been at the Botany Bay dance passed through again ...

to run or gad about; to do anything in a slow or unskilful manner

• 1594, Nashe, Unfort. Trav., 32:

  Why should I goe gadding and fisgigging?

to employ or act as a fiz-gig (a person employed by police to entrap someone)

• 1907, The Lone Hand, page 523:

  The employment of "fiz-gigs"—men engaged by detectives to tempt discharged prisoners to commit specified felones, whereby they fell into the hands that had directed the temptation—was tne a common practice. […] The report of Mr. Francis Longmore and his colleagues may indeed have tended to diminish “fiz-gigging” by calling public opprobrium to the evil.

unclear (noun and verb)

• 1836, The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, page 190:

  To these succeeded fiz-gigs, and then they were the rage, and the highest in the land and those in the court which surrounded them, were to be discovered, as Aldiborontophoscophornio describes Chrononhotontologos, “unfatiguing” themselves from the affairs of state by fiz-gigging, with the greatest gravity and assiduity. At one time it was the “rage” for ladies to make their own shoes; at another ...