jackstraws

1 9.9

A game where players pull sticks from a pile without moving the others

noun

: juego de palillos

My grandfather taught me how to play jackstraws when I was young.

Examples

The children played jackstraws quietly in the corner on a rainy afternoon.
She bought a vintage set of jackstraws at the antique market.
Let's play jackstraws!
The children played jackstraws in the park.
My grandfather taught me how to play jackstraws when I was young.
The children played jackstraws quietly in the corner on a rainy afternoon.
She bought a vintage set of jackstraws at the antique market.

Synonyms

spillikins

vsjackstraws

Archaic

9.9

A game of taking small sticks from a pile without moving others

is the same game described more generally without naming the individual sticks

Surface Forms

jackstraws plural

Morphology

jackstraws = jackstraw (semi-transparent) = jack + straw + s

The compound 'jack' + 'straw' clearly refers to small sticks, but the specific cultural meaning 'a game of removing sticks' is idiomatic and not fully predictable from the parts.

Etymology

Jackstraws comes from the words jack and straw; straw means 'dry grass' and jack was often used as a name for a 'little or ordinary thing'. The game was once played with straw stems or thin sticks, so jackstraws simply means the small straws or sticks you try to pull out without moving the others.