MAGIC WORDS • Nonsense "The first stanza begins with a double-dactyl nonsense line like 'Jiggerypokery.'" -- Jay M. Pasachoff, The Teaching of Astronomy (1990) • Ritual "[T]he whiskers of the male leopard for their jiggery-pokery . . ." -- Donald MacIntosh, Travels in the White Man's Grave (1998) • Special effect "[Lars von Trier's film Europa caused a huge stir at Cannes], not so much for its subject matter but for its extraordinary visual wizardry, involving the overlaying of colored and black-and-white images and various other sorts of jiggery-pokery." -- Toby Rose, quoted in Lars Von Trier: Interviews by Jan Lumholdt (200 ) • Stuff and nonsense -- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Ivanov (1967) • Unscientific, speculative "[S]cientists could not care less about such 'philosophical jiggery-pokery.'" -- Jesper Hoffmeyer, Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1996) Origins: Jiggery-pokery is a nonsense phrase of uncertain origin, dating to the late nineteenth century. There is speculation that it derives from an earlier phrase of Scots dialect, joukery-pawkery (the root words jouk meaning "to dodge" and pawk meaning "trick"). Facts: Jiggery-pokery is one of the plagues and misfortunes that was contained inside Pandora's box of mythology. There were, among other things: Carbuncles, Quagmires, and Jiggery-Pokery, Colic, Depravity, Lummoxes, Louts, Barbed Wire, Insomnia, Practical Jokery, Treachery, Lechery, Deluge, and Droughts." "[T]he Detection Club in Britain, shortly after its foundation in 1928, asked its members to swear an oath promising that their detectives would 'well and truly detect the crimes presented to them' without reliance on 'Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God.'"4 In Literature: • "'Delightful phrase,' Lady Barre murmured with sensuous eyes. 'Jiggerypokery.'" -- Marc Lovell, That Great Big Trenchcoat in the Sky (1988) Encarta Dictionary (2005) As retold by Jeanne Steig in A Gift From Zeus (2001) 4 Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (1972)