mumblety peg

alternative mumbledypeg · alternative mumbletypeg · alternative mumblety-peg · alternative mumble-the-peg · alternative mumbly-peg

1. USuncountableAny of several forms of a game in which a jack-knife is thrown so that it sticks into the ground close to the player's feet.

   Bailey played mumbledypeg with the older boys around the chinaberry tree […]

   1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 17, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, page 94

   2 more examples

   The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming.

   1896, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 1, in Tom Sawyer, Detective

   Others played mumbletypeg with rusty stolen jackknives, or simply drowsed in the sunlight, waking now and then to exchange their sorry belongings […].

   1967, William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Vintage, published 2004, page 296