Etymology
Uncertain. First use appears c. 1588. Appears in publications in the 1600s (e.g. in The Tincker of Turvey) in several forms including the still-current Irish English form naggin, the rare older Irish, Scottish and Northern English form noggan, used by Jonathan Swift, and the Wexford form nuggeen.[1][2] Tomás S. Ó Máille and some older dictionaries like Skeat's derive it from Irish naigín, cnaigín, from cnagaire, cnag,[3][4] but the Oxford English Dictionary argues that Irish naigín and Scottish Gaelic noigean instead derive from English.[1] Compare nog.
Noun
noggin (plural noggins)
- A small mug, cup or ladle; the contents of such a container.
1999, “Bold Doherty”, in Midsummer's Night, performed by Dervish:I needed some nails for to rivet them down...When you go to town you can buy the full noggin but beware you bring none of your fancibles home.
- (dated outside dialects) A small measure of spirits equivalent to a gill.
1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 49, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:I don’t know whether any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real, substantial, hospitable Scotch breakfast, and then went to a slight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whisky to close up with.
- (slang) The head.
2003, James D. Doss, Dead Soul:Or maybe he bumped his noggin when he fell down—after he got clipped on the legs.
2003, John Farris, The Fury and the Power:She bumped her noggin on the bulkhead above the doorway, smiled in apology for her presumed clumsiness.
- (biochemistry) A signalling molecule involved in embryo development, producing large heads at high concentrations.
- Alternative form of nogging (“horizontal beam; rough brick masonry”)
- (measure of spirits): naggin (still current in Ireland)
Translations
measure equivalent to a gill
head
- Dutch: kop (nl) m
- German: Birne (de) f, Rübe (de) f
- Irish: cloigeann (ga) m, ceann m, naigín m
- Italian: zucca (it) f
- Polish: bania (pl) f (slang), łeb (pl) m (slang)
- Portuguese: tola (pt) f (slang)
- Russian: башка́ (ru) f (bašká) (slang), кача́н (ru) m (kačán, literally “head of a cabbage”) (slang), ре́па (ru) f (répa, literally “turnip”) (slang)
- Scottish Gaelic: sgrog m
- Spanish: chaveta (es)
- Swedish: knopp (sv) c, huvudknopp c, skalle (sv) c
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References
Joseph Wright, editor (1903), “NOGGIN”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume IV (M–Q), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
Tomás S. Ó Máille, Seanfhocla Chonnacht, Cois Life, 2010, pag 368
Walter William Skeat, A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882), page 233