[f. WAG sb.2 + -ERY.]
1. The action or disposition of a wag; drollery, jocularity; in early use chiefly, mischievous drollery, practical joking.
1594. Lyly, Mother Bombie, II. i. 2. Now, if I could meete with Risio, it were a world of waggsery.
1611. Cotgr., Drolerie, rye, waggerie, good roguerie.
1650. Cowley, Guardian, I. i. The Colonel’s as full of waggery as an egge’s full of meat.
c. 1656. Sir H. Cholmley, Mem. (1787), 35. I, out of folly and waggery, began to kick one of them.
1737. Chesterf., in C’tess Suffolk’s Lett. (1824), II. 163. Since which he has contented himself with a little general waggery, as occasion offers, such as snatching the bread and butter out of a girl’s hand [etc.].
1762. Foote, Orator, I. Wks. 1799, I. 199. The misapprehension of the second agent, or the ignorance or waggery of the third.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, I. 152. He was so good a fellow, so full of fun and waggery!
1832. T. Creevey, in C. Papers (1904), II. x. 243. She has a great deal of natural waggery.
1858. J. Brown, Horæ Subs., Locke & Sydenham, etc., 420. Excited by … the waggery of his more intellectual neighbours.
1894. J. Knight, David Garrick, xiii. 252. One friend … perpetrated a harmless piece of waggery on the subject.
2. A waggish action or speech; in early use, a piece of mischievous jesting; a practical joke.
1604. Breton, Grimellos Fort. (Grosart), 9/2. If I should tell you the tenth part of the waggeries, that I passed through.
a. 1654. Selden, Table Talk (Arb.), 97. An Ape when he has done some waggery.
1655. trans. Com. Hist. Francion, III. 69. I must needs passe by severall pretty waggeries, which I committed during this my Non-age.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 183. John Birkenhead … pleased the generality of Readers with his waggeries and buffoonries.
1778. S. Crisp, Lett., 8 Dec., in Mme. D’Arblay, Diary (1891), I. 93. In most of our successful comedies there are frequent lively freedoms (and waggeries that cannot be called licentious, neither).
1850. Thackeray, Pendennis, liii. In fact they indulged in a hundred sports, jocularities, waggeries, and petits jeux innocens.
1865. Trollope, Belton Est., xxix. 344. Not being a man given to little waggeries.
