List of lumberjack jargon
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 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 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: 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 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
