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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

noggin.

A small mug, cup or ladle; the contents of such a container.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈnɑɡɪn/US/ˈnɑɡn̩/US/ˈnɒɡɪn/UK
  1. A small mug, cup or ladle; the contents of such a container.

  2. A small measure of spirits equivalent to a gill.

  3. The head.

    slang
  4. A signalling molecule involved in embryo development, producing large heads at high concentrations.

  5. Alternative form of nogging (“horizontal beam; rough brick masonry”).

    alt-of · alternative
Where this word comes from

Uncertain. First use appears c. 1588. Appears in publications in the 1600s (e.g. in The Tincker of Turvey) in several forms including the still-current Irish English form naggin, the rare older Irish, Scottish and Northern English form noggan, used by Jonathan Swift, and the Wexford form nuggeen. Tomás S. Ó Máille and some older dictionaries like Skeat's derive it from Irish naigín, cnaigín, from cnagaire, cnag, but the Oxford English Dictionary argues that Irish naigín and Scottish Gaelic noigean instead derive from English. Compare nog.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.