List of lumberjack jargon

From Academic Kids

Stewart Holbrook was a lumberjack-turned-writer whose first book was Holy Old Mackinaw: A Natural History of the American Lumberjack (ISBN 1112559892). That book, first published in 1938, includes a Loggers Dictionary which defines some of the jargon of the lumberjack. The following list is excerpted from that and other sources:

• Barber chair: a tree which splits upward along the grain during falling.
• Batteau: a type of boat used on river drives in the eastern United States
• Birling: the game of logrolling
• Branding ax: a tool used for marking ownership of a log
• Buck: to cut a tree into lengths after it has been felled
• Bucker: one who saws trees into logs
• Bullcook (also known derogatorily as the crumb boss): a boy who performs chores around camp, such as sweeping up the bunkhouse, cutting wood for fuel, filling wood boxes, and feeding the livestock
• Cayuse: a horse or pony (a Chinook term)
• Conks: fruiting bodies of fungus in rotting wood
• Corks: short, sharp spikes set in the soles of shoes
• Crotch line: a device for loading logs onto railroad cars
• Crown fire: a forest fire that reaches into the tops of trees
• Deacon seat: a bench, made from a large log split lengthwise, running the length of a bunkhouse
• Dehorn: a term for an alcoholic beverage, particularly moonshine, borrowed from the jargon of the Wobblies
• Donkey: a stationary multiple drum machine, powered by steam until the prevalence of the internal combustion engine
• Drag day: the point in the work month when a man can get an advance on his wages
• Driving pitch: high water suitable from driving logs down a river
• Duplex: a stationary engine that both assembles (yards) and loads logs
• Gandy dancer: a pick-and-shovel man
• Gin pole: a short spar, used for loading and unloading logs
• Gyppo: contract work (or worker), measured by the inch or bushel for example, or by the mile in the case of a truck driver
• Hardtack outfit: a company running a logging camp which provides substandard food (derived from the cheap and long-lasting cracker or bread of the same name)
• Hayburner: a horse
• Highball: to hurry
• Hiyu: plenty, large, enough
• Homeguard: a long-time employee of a company
• Hoot-nanny: a small device used to hold a crosscut saw while sawing a log from the bottom up
• Ink slinger: a logging camp timekeeper
• Iron burner: the camp blacksmith
• Jagger: a sliver of wire
• Jerk wire: a line attached to the whistle on a yarding donkey, by which a young man (a punk) blows starting and stopping signals
• King snipe: the boss of a track-laying crew
• Klooch: a woman (Chinook)
• Long logger: a logger working in the fir and redwood country of the Western U.S., where logs were often cut in lengths up to 40 feet
• Macaroni: sawdust
• Memaloose: dead, or death (Chinook)
• Mulligan car: a railroad car where lunch is served
• Nosebag: a lunch bucket
• Nosebag show: a camp where the midday meal is taken to the woods in lunch buckets
• Packing a balloon: carrying one's blankets
• Packing a card: to be a member of a union, such as the Wobblies
• Peavey (also known as cant dog): a tool with a sharp point and a movable hook on it, used on a river to create leaverage when moving floating logs
• Pecker pole: a small tree, often found in the understory of old growth
• Potlatch: a social gathering (a Chinook term)
• Pulaski: a thick-handled tool with oval eye used as a combination axe and hoe, named after its inventor
• Schoolmarm: a log or tree that is forked, stable in river driving because it does not roll easily
• Short staker (or boomer): a worker who quits after earning a small sum
• Skidroad: formerly the path over which oxen pulled logs; it came to mean the part of a city where loggers congregate
• Skookum: strong, stout, brave (Chinook)
• Snoose: damp snuff or chewing tobacco
• Snubber: a device for braking sleighs as they descend steep hills
• Sougan: a heavy woolen blanket
• Swedish fiddle: a crosscut saw
• Tillicum: a Chinook term used also by loggers to mean a man, ordinarily a friend
• Tin pants: waterproof clothing worn by loggers in the rainy Pacific Northwest
• Tyee logger: from the Chinook term meaning a chief, hence the head of a logging operation