Meanings
fogle1
plural fogles
- obsoleteA handkerchief.
1830, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford, 2009, Gutenberg eBook #7735, One, gentlemen, I myself expelled from our corps for ungentlemanlike practices; he picked pockets of fogles, (handkerchiefs)--it was a vulgar employment.
2 more examples
[…]and we've to pick up the stakes and cords at Uncle Ben's, to get the bird's-eye fogles in St. Martin's-lane,[…].
1853, Lord William Lennox, “Ernest Atherley, Or Scenes at Home and Abroad”, in The Sporting Review, Volume 30, page 202Doodles, therefore, wore a cut-away coat, a colored shirt with a fogle round his neck, old brown trousers that fitted very tightly round his legs, and was careful to take no gloves with him.
c. 1867, Anthony Trollope, The Claverings
Fogle2
Origin
Unclear. German Vogel (“bird”) has been suggested, the connection being bird's-eye, a fabric from which such handkerchiefs were made. Hotten (see References) suggests a connection with the Italian slang foglia (“pocket, purse”) or French argot fouille (“pocket”).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
fogle. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fogle
“fogle.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fogle. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “fogle,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/fogle.
Source: fogle on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.