as DARE has mig or miggles for the common marbles won, perhaps Ms. McCaffrey did take personal liberties with the word.

here's what OED has for as etym. for mig:
Origin uncertain; cf. slightly earlier MIGGLE n., and also MIGGIE n. Eng. Dial. Dict. (s.v. mag n.2) records also in similar senses the forms meg, meggy, mag, and Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (s.vv. meg, mig) the forms meg, meggie, migalo, migget, miglet; cf. also maggie, recorded in Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. as a variant of AGGIE n.

all kinds of variants, but no miggsy.

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on a related note, I've just found this in Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood:
For marbles you're either the person sitting up the target or the person shooting... Usually the targets are more valuable: cat's eyes, clear glass with a bloom of colored petals in the centre, red or yellow or green or blue; puries, flawless like colored water or sapphires or rubies; waterbabies with undersea filaments of color suspended in them; metal bowlies; aggies, like marbles only bigger. These exotics are passed from winner to winner. it's cheating to buy them; they have to be won.

The cat's eyes are my favorite. If I win a new one I wait until I'm by myself, then take it out and examine it, turning it over and over in the light. The cat's eyes really are like eyes, but not the eyes of cats. They're the eyes of something that isn't known but exists anyway.

Last edited by tsuwm; 11/12/05 08:22 PM.