Glossary of Lumberjack Lingo

(among the many in Lumberjacks in Love)

stag dance: "ladies" wore a red scarf on one arm or tied a sack around themselves

belly burglar: a bad cook

door knobs: biscuits

lunch hook: a lumberjack's hand

nose bag: food bucket

bark eater: lumberjack, shanty boy

sky pilot: minister called in when a jack is about to die

jill poker: crazy lumberjack

yaps: crazy

shanty nasty: one who stayed on living in the abandoned buildings of a logging camp.

wing ding: a spending spree in the city after a long winter's work

misery whip: a crosscut saw

bark spud: a tool for peeling bark off a tree

arbuckle: coffee

bald faced whiskey: a potent cheap grade of whiskey. Also "Hayward Lightning."

kill dad: pail for odds and ends of tobacco, all could borrow from it.

wearing a wood kimona: dead and in his coffin

big sticks: the woods.

pants rabbits: lice (private livestock)

wampus cat: imaginary animal to which night noises were attributed.

(courtesy of LUMBERJACK LINGO by L. G. Sorden and Jacque Vallier)