pollywog
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: compound
Topics: nautical
transport
Etymology: From earlier polwigge, from Middle English polwygle, equal to poll (“head”) + wiggle.
Compound parts: poll
wiggle
Inflected forms:
form: pollywogs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: polliwog
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: porwiggle
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: porwigle
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: poliwag
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwag
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwig
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwiggle
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: pollywig
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polwig
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: purwiggy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: pollywogs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: pollywogging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: pollywogged
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: pollywogged
pos: verb
tags: past
form: polliwog
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: porwiggle
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: porwigle
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: poliwag
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwag
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwig
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polliwiggle
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: pollywig
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: polwig
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: purwiggy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: A tadpole.
pos: noun
tags: Canada
UK
US
dialectal
examples: So Tommy sang the following verse: “The cold got worse, The frog got hoarse, Till croaking he scared a polliwog!”
gloss: An untrustworthy person, especially a politician.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
derogatory
gloss: A sailor who has not yet crossed the equator.
pos: noun
tags: informal
gloss: To collect mussels, clams, etc. in shallow water using one's hands.
pos: verb
tags: US
intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
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.
gloss: To move in the manner of a tadpole; to zigzag, undulate.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
rare
examples: 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.
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.
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.
Translations: