Jog and Jogging…

If the sight of a jogger jogging in the park jogs your memory, that is thorougly appropriate. To jog originally meant to jerk. So if your memory receives a jolt, it is jogged, as in the tract of 1778An Antidote to Popery; or, the Protestant’s Memory jogg’d in Season.

However, if what happens if you jerk and jolt yourself repeatedly? Well, obviously you could just add the frequentative suffix -le and get joggle. But you might find yourself moving along in little jolts, or as Dr Johnson put it in his dictionary:

Jog: to move with small shocks like those of a low trot.

So a joggling jogger who jogs your memory, is all one verb jogging around the language. However, it has no relation to juggling – which is actually a cognate of jocular.

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