To Briggle

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello. It’s my pleasure to have A Way with Words. This is Tommy Hursant from Carlsbad, California.

Hi, Tommy. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Tommy.

I was born in northern Wisconsin back in the old, old days. And my mother used to have a term that she used when I would be focusing on something, you know, Tommy, clean up the counter of the sink. And I would be just working away, getting all those last little bits out of the corner and say, you know, Tom, you’re briggling again. And so when I would focus on something to the point of going above and beyond the call of duty to get something clean or orderly or whatever, I was briggling.

Now, I’ve looked it up, and I found, and this is probably something that you may know more particularly, Grant, an American slang expression that I would never associate with my saintly mother. And so I thought I’d go to people like you who had a clue as to what the origins of brigholene might be. Can I gather that you found Urban Dictionary on a search and were horrified at the definition you saw there?

Yes. That’s why I knew you would know. The Urban Dictionary is one of those things, when it’s right, great. When it’s wrong, boy, it really goes off the rails. There’s more to say about this, though, than you can easily find online. And you’ll be relieved to know that Briggle does appear in the Dictionary of American Regional English. And the definition there is to fuss about ineffectively and to potter about.

And it may go back to a Scots term, Brechel, which if you look at the Scots National Dictionary online, which is a wonderful resource, the first definition is a term expressive of the waddling and bustling motion of a person of small stature.

Well, that does fit.

I was just a kid.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, and it may be related to a northern England dialectal term, broggle, which means to poke about in a hole with a stick and just keep at it. So it’s sort of, you know.

She used another term when she would catch me briggling and say, oh, you are so persnickety.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is that kind of consistent with that?

Persnickety has a different definition these days, doesn’t it, Martha?

Yeah, it’s a different word that just means particular, right?

Yeah, specific or kind of obsessive about detail.

Fastidious.

By the way, not only is there the verb to briggle, but there’s an adjective, briggly, which basically means restless or kind of erratic. A briggly child is a common use of it. And even you’ll find it in fiction here and there, but it’s not that common in everyday speech in the United States.

Well, yes. My mother actually was the only one in the family tree who came out with that. I haven’t heard any other aunts or uncles use it. She comes from like a bohemian area on the mother’s side. And I thought maybe Scott Hanger, the fact that it’s got a Scott origin, is a surprise to me. But I guess language gets around.

Well, it does. Most of the instances I’ve seen of that word occur in the Midwest, Indiana, Ohio. Places like that.

Yeah, one dictionary has it in western Pennsylvania.

Mm—

So it doesn’t really surprise me.

Oh, my goodness.

But it’s never been that common. It does not occur very often at all in print, so it means it probably doesn’t occur that often in speech either.

Mm—

But the good news is that your saintly mother wasn’t saying anything naughty.

Oh, I am so comforted to hear that.

Thank you.

You can sleep at night, Tommy.

Tommy, thank you for your call. I really appreciate it.

Well, thanks again for your good service, my friend.

Our pleasure.

All right, Tom. Take care.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I’ve got to say, I really like Urban Dictionary and all the wonderful—

Oh, yeah.

It records tons of stuff that you can’t find anywhere else, and at this point it’s been on the Internet long enough that you can get some historical perspective on some of this thing.

Sure.

But probably 90, 95% of it is inserted rubbish that nobody ever said except the person who typed it in. Even then, it’s probably fake.

Right.

It’s crowdsourced, right? I mean, anybody can put a definition on there. People put things in there to show off or to try to start a word that never actually was used. And it’s best to look something up that you already know rather than to learn new language.

Right, right.

But in this case, there are some definitions that are terrible. Do not go to Urban Dictionary looking up burgle.

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