David Stitt explains:
The Herald recently ran a little contest to find out what people thought that woman is doing in the new Irish Famine statue in front of Borders on Washington Street. A friend of mine works in a hardware store where they were having fun showing a picture of the statue to their customers and asking them what they thought she was doing. A local lady took one look at the picture and says 'She's snappin gaggahs!' Nobody had the slightest idea what she was talking about, but were too shy to ask her.
Then a few days ago a dear friend of mine came back to town for the summer. She's a Quinzy native, but lives in Arizona now. She can tell what high school people went to in Boston after listening to them for just a minute. Anyway, we asked her what it meant.
She said it originally meant eating some kind of little fish with your hands. You know. You lift up the fish, open your mouth, and drop it in. But later it came to mean, um, well, someone coughing something up into the air and having that land in someone else's mouth! We still don't know which meaning the lady in the hardware store had in mind.
Kip Francis, a Capie 'airleggah's son (A native Cape Codder and son a of a shell fisherman) fills in the meaning:
A gagga (gagger - a size you gag on) is a very large quahog (thick shelled clam, overgrown littleneck, two steps above a "chowda"). "Snappin' a gagger" is quaffing a really big quahog, the consistency of which, is not unsimilar to um, well ya know.
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Comments
re: Snappin' gaggahs
By Matthew Brooks
Thu, 10/21/2004 - 2:36am
I've lived on the South Shoah my whole life, and I've nevah heard of snappin gaggahs used in that context. Snappin is a term used in place of snorting, and a gaggah is a big line of cocaine, named such because apparently the drug drips down the back of yah throat, and a lot of it can make you gag.
re: Snappin' gaggahs
By me
Mon, 11/28/2005 - 7:55pm
snapping gaggahs is definately used to describe snorting large lines of cocaine....
re: Snappin' gaggahs
By sully
Thu, 03/02/2006 - 7:28pm
in Fall River it meant eating hot dogs ie gaggahs usually at Dirty Nicks
re: Snappin' gaggahs
By tonydatts
Tue, 04/04/2006 - 9:59pm
snappin gaggahs has absolutely nothing to do with shellfish and everything to do with doing a huge line of coke. tell your friend to go back to arizona
re: Snappin' gaggahs
By BMacDaddy
Fri, 04/20/2007 - 10:34pm
It's comes from RI souther MA area were the hot dogs are called weiners or gagg-ers. Their called gaggers cause you eat so many of them...look up RI Phrases. Their also called rockets in woonsocket. Alot of MA stuff gets mixed in with RI and ME phrases.
If you look at a picture (or
By LB
Wed, 08/05/2009 - 2:28pm
If you look at a picture (or the real thing), it doesn't look like she's snorting cocaine. Her head is back and her hand is up. I guess it could be right after having snorted. It does look more like she's throwing stuff into her mouth. Like people who can catch popcorn out of the air.
Pitcha
By fenwayguy
Sun, 09/06/2009 - 12:13pm
Did she just snap a gaggah or what?
[img]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/311629322_23270...
Creative Commons attribution: flickr.com/mikemac29
She could be bangin out rails
By highnoon
Sun, 09/06/2009 - 3:08pm
Yeah, gaggers have always been used with the coke connotation in my experience.
Ohhh The Memories!!!
By Gary...Gman
Fri, 07/09/2010 - 1:48pm
I can say this from experience, the term "snappin gaggahs" most definitely referred to snorting huge lines of coke during all of the 80's & 90's.
"Snappin lines" was simply snorting a "normal" sized line of coke, and "snappin turtles" meant you were pissed off or about ready to fight...
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