Obs. exc. Hist. Forms: 6–7, 9 logget, (7 logat, locket), 8–9 loggat. [app. some kind of derivative of LOG sb.1]
1. An old game (see quot. 1773); also the missile used in the game. (See LOGGERHEAD 5.)
[1541: Implied in LOGGATING.]
1581. Lambarde, Eiren., III. ii. (1588), 353. Bowles, Closh, Coites, Loggets or other unlawfull Games.
1602. Shaks., Ham., V. i. 100. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at Loggets with ’em? mine ake to thinke on’t.
1612. Dekker, If it be not Good, Wks. 1873, III. 315. 200 crownes? I ha lost as much at loggets.
1705. T. Brown, To J. Haines, in Coll. Poems, 119. What though they ne’er broke Jest, or Pate at Lockets, They’ve Sence enough, for all that, in their Pockets.
1773. Steevens, in Shaks. Wks., X. 315. This is a game played in several parts of England even at this time. A stake is fixed into the ground; those who play, throw loggats at it, and he that is nearest the stake, wins: I have seen it played in different counties at their sheep-shearing feasts.
1858. Sat. Rev., 17 April, 401/1. Let us take the case of a fine old English gentleman in a country house on a wet day in the middle of the sixteenth century. After he had … played at bowls or loggats till his arms ached, how was he to pass the time till supper?
2. A pole, heavy stake.
1600. Holland, Livy, XXX. x. 746. The enemies from out of the Carthaginian ships, began to cast out certaine loggets [orig. asseres] with yron hookes at the end (which the souldiors use to call Harpagones) for to take hold upon the Roman ships.
1613. Markham, Eng. Husbandman, I. II. ix. 79. Beating of fruit downe with long poales, loggets, or such like.
1633. B. Jonson, Tale Tub, IV. vi. Now are they tossing of his legs and arms, Like loggets at a pear-tree.
3. attrib. and Comb., as loggat-ground; loggat-playing adj.
1793. Blount, in Reed’s Shaks., XV. 305, note. A loggat-ground, like a skittle-ground, is strewed with ashes, but is more extensive.
1884. Black, Jud. Shakes., iii. None of your logget-playing, tavern-jesting, come-kiss-me-Moll lovers.
