noggins

Noun

noggin (plural noggins)

1. A small mug, cup or ladle; the contents of such a container.
   • Here Nat Adams, the burly bar-keeper, dispensed bad whisky at the rate of two shillings a noggin, or a guinea a bottle…1889, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Parson of Jackman's Gulch
2. (dated outside dialects) A small measure of spirits equivalent to a gill.
   • I don’t know whether any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real, substantial, hospitable Scotch breakfast, and then went to a slight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whisky to close up with.1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 49, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC
3. (slang) The head.
   • Or maybe he bumped his noggin when he fell down—after he got clipped on the legs.2003, James D. Doss, Dead Soul
4. A signalling molecule involved in embryo development, producing large heads at high concentrations.