Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A game played with a pile of straws or thin sticks, with the players attempting in turn to remove a single stick without disturbing the others.
- noun One of the straws or sticks used in this game.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A figure or effigy of a man made of straw; hence, a man without any substance or means; a dependent. Also
jack of straw . - noun One of a set of straws or strips of ivory, wood, bone, or the like, used in a children's game.
- noun plural The game thus played.
- noun [capitalized] In English history, a name assumed by rick-burners and destroyers of machines during the early years of the nineteenth century.
- noun The whitethroat, Sylvia cinerea, also called
winnell-straw , from the straw used in making its nest. Seestrawsmall . - noun The blackcap, Sylvia atricapilla.
- noun The narrow-leafed plantain, Plantago lanceolata. Also called
rib-grass and English plantain.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An effigy stuffed with straw; a scarecrow; hence, a man without property or influence.
- noun One of a set of straws of strips of ivory, bone, wood, etc., for playing a child's game, the jackstraws being thrown confusedly together on a table, to be gathered up singly by a hooked instrument, without touching or disturbing the rest of the pile. See
Spilikin . A modern variation, calledpick-up-sticks (U.S. 1940+), is played with thin wooden sticks of different colors, each color having different values for scoring; the sticks are dislodged from the pile with the hand or with one of the sticks.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun usually plural One of the pieces used for the game variously called
jackstraws or pick-up-sticks. - noun obsolete An insignificant person.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a thin strip of wood used in playing the game of jackstraws
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word jackstraw.
Examples
-
Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life! reply jackstraw
Amazon To Launch Payments Services; Will Compete With PayPal and Google Checkout Michael Arrington 2005
-
The jackstraw debris of timber and slash was left to go crisp for a few months; then it was torched.
The Song of The Dodo David Quammen 2004
-
The jackstraw debris of timber and slash was left to go crisp for a few months; then it was torched.
The Song of The Dodo David Quammen 2004
-
The jackstraw jumble of rotting wood made for uncertain footing.
Drowning World Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2003
-
The jackstraw jumble of rotting wood made for uncertain footing.
Drowning World Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2003
-
His hand glided above the long arm-bones of the larger skeleton, a dark shadow fluttering like a large moth as it crossed the jackstraw pile of ribs.
Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992
-
They turned back to the business of the climb, scrambling over jackstraw falls of rock and crouch-walking up inclined planes of stone shot with glitters of quartz and mica.
The Gunslinger King, Stephen, 1947- 1982
-
Secure in my interpretation I looked it up in my American Heritage Dictionary today and found the following instead: jackstraw n.
The Annotated "Jack Straw" Robert Hunter 1971
-
Beyond the jackstraw heap of bodies the thick square door still hid the source of the tiny sounds, but Gann put them out of his mind.
Starchild Omnibus Pohl, Frederik & Williamson, Jack 1963
-
Only a jackstraw heap of corpses and stirring near-dead marked where they had been.
Starchild Omnibus Pohl, Frederik & Williamson, Jack 1963
hernesheir commented on the word jackstraw
It's a bird.
January 5, 2012