Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a thing, a gadget, a fanciful contrivance.

1824		Casket June 77: Out squealed Cousin Betty Deakins [...] O the wonderation, what a nation sight of jiggermarees!
1831		Navy at Home I 66: Why is this a rum coat under this gigamaree.
1831		Navy at Home II 9: She’ll have to dowse all those gig-a-marees in the channel.
1848		W.T. Thompson Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel 156: I ax’d the captain what sort of a gigamaree he had got up thar for a flag?
1851		‘How Sally Hooter Got Snake-Bit’ in T.A. Burke Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 71: One uv them ar all-fired yankee pedlars come er long with er outlandish kind uv er jigamaree to make the wimmin’s coat sorter stick out in the t’other eend.
1876		Morn. Star & Catholic messenger (N.O.) 26 Mar. 3/3: This thingumbod there goes down through the hole and fastens the jigamaree, and that comes with the crinkum-crankum.
1881		Nat. Reppublican (DC) 8 Jan. 6/4: The great want of the public has not been a single speciality pad, but some sort of combined duplex jigamaree.
1890		Daily Morn. Astorian (Astoria, OR) 23 Aug. 3/4: It was richly embroidered [...] and was hung all over with little jigamarees.
1908		N.Y. Tribune 1 Nov. 6/1: The jigamaree that was supposed to broil the chops was as cold as a dog’s nose.
1910		Wash. Herald (DC) 22 July 5/1: ‘And that jigamaree of complicated little silver sieves?’ ‘A novelty’.
1921		N.Y. Tribune 9 Jan. 14/2: The shining rows of kettles and percolators and patent jigamarees.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 26: jagamaree. Something for which there is no other name, or whose name is momentarily forgotten; a thingumbob, thingumajig, what-dye-call-it, jiggumbob, jiggalorum, whoozis.
1944		P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: Jiggumabob, jagamaree [...] articles whose technical names escape your for the moment.

2. anything the speaker considers ridiculous or worthless.

1841		‘The Saucy Hell-Cat and the Indiaman’ in Lloyd’s Companion 19 Sept. 2/4: ‘’Tis a low-hulled, morfroditish, jiggamaree-rigg'd craft, sir — under a heavy press of sail’.
1848		W.T. Thompson Major Jones’s Sketches of Travel 8: The southern people [...] spend all their money in travelin and byin fineries and northern gigamarees.
a.1860		N.Y. Spirit of the Times (N.Y.) in Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (1860) 221: The ‘housekeeper’s friend’, that ere jigamaree the wimmin scrubs with, instead of going on their hands and knees as they used to.
1915		Wash. Herald (DC) 7 Nov. 27/3: He went through the Masonic jigamarees and of coure Johnson stood the gaff.

3. a cunning trick.

1847–81		Halliwell Dict. Archaic and Provincial Words II 484/2: Jiggamaree, a manœuvre. Var. dial.
1864		Webster Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. n.p.: Jiggamaree, a sportive or cunning trick; a maneuver. (Colloq. and low.).
1890		Century Dict. n.p.: Jigamaree.