Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Jiggery-pokery

Now here's a word for the books (at least I'd sure like to use it in mine): jiggery-pokery.

All you confidence men (and women!), sharpers,  bunko steerers, chiselers, and four-flushers: We are on to your games of jiggery-pokery. Which according to The Thinker's Thesaurus by Peter E. Meltzer means....
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....scheming or trickery. HA!

Oh, I do adore this slangy bit of language.

World Wide Words also finds jiggery-pokery charming in its deceit, describing it as "a delightful word for describing underhand practices or dishonest manipulation of individuals for personal profit."

WWW goes on to say experts believe it comes from a Scots phrase of the seventeenth century, joukery-pawkery:

The first bit of it means underhand dealing, from a verb of obscure origin, jouk, that means to dodge or skulk.... The second bit is from pawky, a Scottish and Northern English word that can mean artful, sly, or shrewd, though it often turns up in the sense of a sardonic sense of humour.

I love it. I want to claim it for myself. But what about the time frame?

According to World Wide Words, jiggery-pokery first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century.

How close to the end of the century? I must find out. Off I go, to search out the earliest reference I can uncover, which happens to be in the December 13, 1884, issue of Vanity Fair.

1884, in print. Well, that's close enough for me to have one of my characters mutter it in 1882.

Get ready for jiggery-pokery to show up someday, sometime, in a future Silver Rush book.

I suspect jiggery-pokery led to this fine hand of cards...
Image from Mark Twain's The Professor's Yarn from Life on the Mississippi.