Jiggery-pokery and Pure Applesauce

Jiggery-pokery and Pure Applesauce Jiggery-pokery and Pure Applesauce Jiggery-pokery and Pure Applesauce By Maeve Maddox The choice of words in a recent Supreme Court dissent prompted this email from a reader: Justice Scalia recently used the terms pure applesauce and jiggery-pokery. I was able to find what jiggery-pokery means but not pure applesauce. Can you help? Jiggery-pokery, as the reader presumably discovered, is a colloquial expression meaning â€Å"deceitful or dishonest manipulation; hocus pocus, humbug.† Merriam-Webster labels it â€Å"chiefly British.† Applesauce is an informal expression meaning, â€Å"insincere flattery, lies.† The OED labels it â€Å"North American slang,† but I found examples in Australian and British usage. â€Å"Pure applesauce† is â€Å"nonsense unmixed with a shred of honesty or truth.† Examples of applesauce to mean nonsense or invention: â€Å"Well, I need you to understand, Lindsay, that that is  a load of applesauce.- Dale: Image of Innocence, Roo Palmer (Australian novelist), 2010.   â€Å"All those grandmas want to talk about the vote. Thats nothing but  a load of applesauce.† Lilies in Moonlight: A Novel, Allison K. Pittman, 2011. â€Å"Well, flattering as this passage may be to my self-esteem, it is, as far as my recollection goes, pure applesauce.†- Owen Barfield (British philosopher), quoted in C. S. Lewiss List: The Ten Books That Influenced Him Most, 2015.   Examples of jiggery-pokery to mean â€Å"deceitful or manipulative goings-on†: But  spare me  this nationalist  jiggery pokery; no one needs to hear it- Reader comment. God only knows what jiggery pokery has been going on with the judicial branch but Id be shocked if they havent also been compromised.- Reader comment. I’ve been busy of late with the new jiggery pokery that is The Children and Families Act  2014, Part 3.- A blogger on children’s issues. Dont come to me with your sociological jiggery-pokery; its all coincidence and barely worthy of remark.- The Guardian (UK). Examples of jiggery-pokery to mean â€Å"manipulation of objects†: Ever since then, Ive been a secret advocate of the ancient Chinese art of needle-based jiggery pokery.- Article about acupuncture, The Week (UK).   I did some techno-jiggery-pokery to let me watch videos outside the country they were meant to be viewed in, but that was in Firefox.- Reader comment in The Guardian. The thrill of it all is in the reactions of the spooked, rather than the clever jiggery-pokery that allows furniture to become mobile or a marble to stop dead at someone’s feet.- Review of The Enfield Haunting, a television miniseries, The Guardian. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:30 Synonyms for â€Å"Meeting†Ten Yiddish Expressions You Should Know15 Names and Descriptions of Effects