coggle - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
coggle, coagle vb To shake, totter, be unsteady or rickety. Hence n The movement of anything that should stand steadily, or the propensity to be unsteady. [origin uncertain, but possibly imitative; oed coggle vb2 Scottish and dialect, possibly from a root kug- with the sense ‘rounded lump’, cf German Kugel, Dutch kōgel; snd coggle vb1 1 ‘to rock, totter, shake’]
Ulst.:
1891 Simmons Armagh Words and Phrases 7 coggle = to shake, to be unsteady.
1904 Marshall Dial of Ulster 125 coggle = the movement of anything that should stand steadily.
1923 Lutton Montiaghisms 15 coggle = to stand unsteadily, so as to be at liberty to rock from side to side.
1942 Bangor Words 19 coggle = to rock, not being firmly placed on its base.
1980 McClean Ulster Words II 2 coagle = to balance unevenly.
2014 Fenton Hamely Tongue 48 coagle = to rock, wobble (e.g. of a chair with one leg slightly shorter than the others: ‘That chire coagles’); to cause to rock, etc.: ‘Daenae coagle the table’. Ibid. = a tendency to rock, wobble, etc.: ‘haes a weethin o a coagle’.
U.S.:
1843 Hall New Purchase 142 Some carried and fixed tables, pushing and kicking and jambing at them till they consented to stay fixed and not coggle!
