Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a mule or a horse.

1860		N.C. Univ. Mag. Sept. 92: A close observer might have seen a boy of my dimensions astride an animal of the jug-head breed .
1911		Sun (NY) 22 Mar. 4/4: Jughead is a black mule who travels in line after old Bill Molly.
1926		D. Branch Cowboy and His Interpreters 40: The ‘jug-head’ seemed never to remember his hazing of the day before.
1930		(con. 1910s) L. Nason A Corporal Once 13: Jugheads brayed.
1933		(con. 1860s) R. Bradford Kingdom Coming 255: Efn I was skinnin’ dese jughaids over in Alabam’, I’d fix ’em up good.
c.1943		‘Bill O. Lading’ You Chirped a Chinful!! n.p.: Hardtail: Army mule. Also . . . Jughead.
1953		Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, OH) 29 Sept. 5/5: ‘Jughead’ is the word for a crazy horse.
1966		T.V. Olsen Hard Men (1974) 143: Hannah brought the sluggish jughead to a halt.
1984		I. Doig Eng. Creek 84: One inveterate jughead of a horse named Bubbles.
1998		Daily News (N.Y.) 3 Sept. 111/3: All he can come up with is one puff piece after another about his beloved jugheads.

2. a fool, a general term of abuse.

1899		in W.B. Gatewood Jr Smoked Yankees (1971) 214: He too has been victimized and made a ‘Jug Head’ of by those who sent him.
1927		(con. 1914–18) L. Nason Three Lights from a Match 15: Shut up, you two chatterin’ jugheads, and let a sensible man sleep.
1928		C. Panzram Journal of Murder in Gaddis & Long (2002) 116: I have met every kind of a crook there is. [...] needle pumpers and snow snifters, hop heads and jug heads. [...] My kind have their names for each other: [...] jug head— dumbhead.
1939		L. Short Raiders of the Rimrock 209: Miss Kincaid, you jughead!
1944		J.M. Inks diary Eight Bailed Out (1954) 29 July 37: The thin one, ‘Goofy,’ and our interpreter, ‘Jughead.’ The names fit.
1962		(con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 46: Cut out the B.S., Corporal Solly, and tell this little jughead.
1969		R.M. Stern Brood of Eagles (1976) 157: We’ve even gotten the slide-rule jugheads – ‘Johnny’s opinion of engineers,’ – to recognize you can’t put three things where there’s only room for one.
1976		in Woodward & Bernstein The Final Days 243: Some of the others called him Jughead.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 48: jughead. The type specimen is the dimwitted Jughead Jones, sidekick of the hero of the Archie comics.
1999		John & Pascal Fooling Around 1: Calling Floyd a jughead wasn’t exactly the nastiest thing I could have said.
2002		G.K. Garrison From Thunder to Breakfast 165: Listen, you big jughead, you’re goin’ to kill somebody doin’ stuff like that.