Stogging around

stog around, stug around verb phrase To move or go around in a heavy or clumsy manner.
1925 Dargan Highland Annals 247 But they’s all skeered to marry Nathe, an’ no wonder when he kept stuggin’ round the country lookin’ like the hind wheels o’ destruction. 1967 DARE = to move around in a way that makes people take notice of you (Gatlinburg TN). 1997 Montgomery Coll. (Oliver); He’d go stoggin around the country (Jones).

[OED stog v 2 “to walk clumsily or heavily”; EDD stog v 3 “to walk heavily or awkwardly, to plod”; cf SND stodge; CUD stog; Web3 stog Scottish perh alteration of stodge “to trudge through, or as it through muck and mire”]

~Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English

A Blind Pig reader inquired about my use of the word stogging in a recent post. It’s a word I’ve heard and used all my life. I never gave any thought to stogging being an Appalachian word until I read the comment.

The usage of the word stoggin(g) that I’m familiar with, is identical to the description in the entry from the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English.

Stogging is a wonderful word. The very sound it makes as it comes off your tongue brings to mind the action it describes.

“Last night I heard him stogging around out in the yard. I figured he had come home half lit again. But he’d stuck his boot right in the bucket the children had been playing mud pies with.”

Tipper

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35 Comments

  1. One of the girls must be more cold natured then the other. Noticed in both pictures long sleeves, short sleeves lol

  2. Stogging was new to me; I wait to hear someone use it in a natural way, and I am just waiting for the right time–not in snow but in mud. I learned several expressions new to me, such as tanglefooting. Fun!

  3. Like many of your readers, I have never heard the term “stogging.” The closest similar word I can think of is “slogging.”

  4. Never heard “stoggin” but hear and use “sloggin'” all the time for a similar purpose. It’s even worse than muckin’ around – – think irrigation applications: If the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas the soil is quite deep so when you irrigation either row crops or orchards you do a lot of often knee deep sloggin’ around as you set or repair pans (usually square areas around 4 to 8 trees which are filled with water one at a time so you can control the flow as it comes out of the surge wells which are connected to the irrigation canals) to hold the water around the trees so it can sink in; or when you are setting pipes, adjusting lunas, or repairing irrigation ditches for row crops.
    More recently I have used it to describe the feeling I have when the thyroid goes low – “feel like I’m slogging through a world filled with clear mud!”
    “Lookin’ like the hind wheels of destruction” certainly does catch the eye and mind. The reader who said it made them think of a toddler reminded me of 3 things: 1) your rarely see a mother of a toddler(s)who is out of shape as she tries to keep up with those little perpetual motion machines, 2) a certain extremely ADHD student I had who kept the entire school on red alert as this whirling dervish plowed through the school system, 3) then there was Erma Bombeck’s comment somewhere about houses with toddler’s not needing burglar systems – a house with a toddler was already burglar proofed by all the toddler toys,tools,and paraphernalia strewn about the house!

  5. I am looking out the window and watching big fluffy flakes of snow wafting by. When the wind dies they seem to float for a moment before drifting to the ground. It’s the kind of snowflakes that you like to try to catch in your mouth. I’ll go out and try to head it off and turn it your way if I can.

  6. Tipper,
    Don’t recon I ever heard “stoggin”
    around. My daddy use to say when
    something wouldn’t work: “That
    won’t last long as Patty stayed in hell.”
    I got 2 1/2″ of SNOW up at my house, only 1″ here at the shop.
    But it’s the powdery kind that
    makes good Snowcream and I plan
    to have a bowl when I get home.
    …Ken

  7. “Lookin like the hind wheels of destruction.” LOL! Oh i do like that one. For sure it’s entering my lexicon! I sure do love this site, Tipper.

  8. Tipper, I must have so much sling language our renter from Iowa have to cover their mouth in order for me not to see her laugh.
    Our mountain ways make them snigger as old folk would say and it is and can be very rude to mountain folks too.
    One thing mountain folds have manner huh? Everyone seems to love it here.

  9. I have never heard ‘stoggin’, but it’s so descriptive. And ‘hind wheels of destruction’ paints the most eloquent word picture!

  10. Never heard stog either. However, I have done a lot of slogging; particularly on long uphill hikes that become a slog from hell.

  11. NO! NO! NO! Tipper: It is the hind wheels of hard times you want to use and SEE! That means things are getten better fer you.
    That thar other expression is new to me. Maybe it was derived from somebody who didn’t tak plain – and wuz trying to say stocking! When I was little, my sister and me had our own language and folks would figger out what we were saying and THEN they’d use our words. They may abin making fun of us!
    Eva Nell
    p.s. We are gittin snow like in Yellow Knife – just snowen steady all the time. Don’t go there this time of year! It gets to 40 below before you know it!

  12. Tipper,
    Power went off again last night for a few minutes…This here ice storm has been the “hind wheels o’ destruction” !
    This morning it is beginning to look like the day is headed down “to hell in a hand- basket,” as it is snowing and we have at least a inch so far on top of this ice!
    There won’t be no stogging, tromping, romping, stomping, trudging, muddling today! Why one couldn’t even “slog” like in Bill’s comment!
    That is until I get chains on my roll-a-tor. Maybe keeping me from “slippery sliding” down the walkway. A’kin to turning my roll-a-tor into “a bobsled on a
    sidewalk luge”! Been there, done that once already! I looked like a ‘side-goggling’ Donegal from across the sea!
    Thanks Tipper,
    PS…You may have snow or you may have not…I’m about to give up on snow for Brasstown!

  13. I do not recall ever hearing that word nor have I heard the expression “hind wheels of destruction.” I somehow get a mental picture of a cute little toddler.
    The word Jim mentions is very familiar, but was used more like, “Don’t come in here with your clodhoppers trackin’ up my clean floor.” My family used to refer to all heavy shoes as brogans, and I just looked back in your blog and found where Pap also used the word brogans. If there was anybody who seemed to move around clumsily inside or even outside, they were called klutzy. I love your posts on Appalachian sayings and expressions, as I find many I had thought were widespread are actually unique to Appalachia.
    I still get a few strange looks from yankee cousins. Fortunately their parents were formerly from this area, and have familiarized them somewhat.

  14. I’ve never heard the word and I thought Mom and Dad used every Appalachian word out there plus some that never made it to any dictionary.
    Looking like the hind wheel o’ destruction is a good one!

  15. I’ve heard and used slogging around but don’t recall stogging around. Slogging around usually referred to walking through wet and/or freshly plowed ground or through a heavy rain. The ground isn’t fit for slogging around this morning in Bryson City, it’s a bit to hard and will be harder still tomorrow. I’m looking for some of that Global Warming!

  16. I’ve heard that one Tip, but not a lot. The Deer Hunter’s Dad used to use that word about me, said I stogged around the house. LOL.
    Now I really like that “hind wheels o’distruction” I’ve never heard that one before. It’s kind of like “hell on wheels” I even knew one man to say “hell in a bonnet” He was speaking of his wife, of course.
    We do have some colorful expressions!

  17. Tipper–I’d like to think, simply by virtue of long exposure, that I’m pretty familiar with the language and peculiar word usages of this part of the world. Also, since Olive Tilford Dargan would almost certainly have picked up that word while living at Round Top in Swain County, I’m even more struck by the term. I’ve never heard it and will be interested to see if other Swain Countians such as my brother and Bill Burnett are familiar with the term.
    The closest I know is “clodhopperin’ around” or, in connection with the example you use, “tanglefootin'”(i. e., walking while inebriated).
    Jim Casada

  18. Some mornings, when the kitties don’t think you need to sleep at night, I stog around the kitchen to get some coffee. Good word! I’ve added it to my vocabulary.

  19. I’d never heard of stogging around either (although I’ve done plenty of it – needed to get that in before b. ruth got around to finger-pointing out an example 😉

  20. I’ve never heard that expression before. Interesting. Now come to think of it I have heard of stodgy, like a stodgy ole man.
    “lookin’ like the hind wheels o’ destruction” that caught my eye too!

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