pollywog

English

Etymology 1

From earlier polwigge, from Middle English polwygle, equal to poll (“head”) +‎ wiggle.

Alternative forms

• polliwog, porwiggle, porwigle
• poliwag, polliwag, polliwig, polliwiggle, pollywig, polwig, purwiggy (obsolete)

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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Noun

pollywog (plural pollywogs)

1. (chiefly dialectal, UK, US, Canada) A tadpole.
   • 1897, L. Frank Baum, “The Story of Tommy Tucker”, in Mother Goose in Prose:

     So Tommy sang the following verse: “The cold got worse, The frog got hoarse, Till croaking he scared a polliwog!”

2. (derogatory, now rare) An untrustworthy person, especially a politician.
3. (nautical, informal) A sailor who has not yet crossed the equator.

Translations

tadpole — see tadpole

Verb

pollywog (third-person singular simple present pollywogs, present participle pollywogging, simple past and past participle pollywogged)

1. (intransitive, US) To collect mussels, clams, etc. in shallow water using one's hands.
   • 2001, Matthew Mohlke, “Quad Cities” (chapter 7), in Floating Down the Country, Red Wing, Minn.: Lone Oak Press, Ltd., →ISBN, page 91:

     She was a ninety-year-old Irish lady, and knew more about the river than anyone I’d met. She knew every tow ever to pass by her house, and told me stories of pollywogging when she was a girl. When she wasn’t hunting clams, she was fishing cats, and knew every beach, island and milemarker on the river.

   • 2003 May, Linda Landrigan, quoting Joe Helgerson, “Editor’s Notes”, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, volume 48, number 5, →ISSN, page 5:

     I grew up on the Mississippi River and as a youth I fished, camped, and pollywogged for clams on the river, but I never found a pearl.

   • 2012, Lisa Knopp, “Mississippi Harvest” (chapter 3), in What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte, Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, →ISBN, page 35:

     In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were three methods of harvesting mussels. The most primitive was wading into shallow water and collecting the mussels by hand. “Toe-digging” or “pollywogging” was fine if you didn’t need very many mussels.

2. (intransitive, rare) To move in the manner of a tadpole; to zigzag, undulate.
   • 1984, Phil Patton, “Off the Set” (chapter 12), in Razzle-Dazzle: The Curious Marriage Of Television And Professional Football, New York, N.Y.: The Dial Press, →ISBN, page 142:

     Crossing the goal line, [Billy "White Shoes"] Johnson was automatically transformed in to a kind of dancing cartoon: legs pollywogging back and forth like plastic limbs, knees—at least before some injuries—seemingly flexing in all planes, football held aloft in one hand.

   • 1985, Timothy S. Lowry, And Brave Men, Too, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, published August 1986, →ISBN, page 190:

     I guess he figured I could make it back to the bank on my own. I stayed out there and kind of pollywogged up and down getting my breath. The cool water felt so good.

   • 1987, Jerry Gibbs, “Trolling with Noodles” (chapter 14), in Advanced Tactics for Bass and Trout, New York, N.Y.: Outdoor Life Books, →ISBN:

     A very big chinook salmon at the end of my line was shooting for the horizon off the boat’s port side, and the only thing I could do was hold the rod with two hands and blink away the pearls of perspiration that were pollywogging down my forehead and into my eyes.

References

• “pollywog”, in Collins English Dictionary, 2011–present.
• “pollywog”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
• “pollywog”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Etymology 2

Blend of Polynesian +‎ wog. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “influenced by etymology 1?”)

Noun

pollywog (plural pollywogs)

1. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (New Zealand, slang, ethnic slur, offensive) A person of Polynesian (usually Samoan) descent.