Repairing the mismatch entailed giving up declension in favour of a simple number contrast where the semantic nondefaultness of plurality matches the inflectedness of the plural form.

Its variations show a familiar effort to bring a new and strange word into harmony with the language—an effort arising from what philologists call the law of Hobson-Jobson.

There are pictures of the original “gollywogg” (thus spelt) from Florence Upton′s 19th century children′s books; there are examples of anti-semitic Edwardian gollies with huge noses, and all sorts of other curiosities.

“I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”.