Pokes ?

Four-letter men were our forefathers. Never more so than when measuring things. With a bind and a bing, a fatt and a flyk, a shid and a swod and an unch. Meaning 250 eels, 8 cwt of lead, 4 bales of unbound books, a side of bacon, 4 feet of firewood, and either an ounce or an inch. They poured their wine by the aume or the fust, and cut their cloth by the goad - not to be confused with the gawd, which was a measure of steel. Their nook was not cosy; it covered 20 acres. Their idea of a glen, on the other hand, was either a bunch of teasels (in Essex and Gloucestershire) or 25 herrings. Take 15 glens and you had a rees. Take two pokes, and what you got was a gybe. Not that they ever agreed how much wool should go into a poke, or whether it should not rightly be a pook, a poik, a powk or a pock. But 240 dishes of lead were undoubtedly a boot, 28 lb of wood were a toad, a pint was of course a mugg, and a kade was a thousand sprats, though this could also be a gag.

To me 'A poke" is clearly defined in Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Don't forget Poke Salad Annie

And pig and a poke.

Don't ever call em cow pokers

edgarblythe wrote:

And pig and a poke.

I believe the expression is 'a pig in a poke,' edgar. In some dialects a 'poke' was another word for a sack.

Lustig Andrei wrote:

edgarblythe wrote:

And pig and a poke.

I believe the expression is 'a pig in a poke,' edgar. In some dialects a 'poke' was another word for a sack.

A pig having a poke is not the same as your traditional pig in a poke.