It’s generally a good idea to keep most of your bodily fluids to yourself, especially if they can be described as loogies, luggies, lugies, or green spit. Others will thank you for your self-control and courtesy, trust us. But if you feel the urge to hock a loogie, you should at least have a working knowledge of basic gross-out technology.
To hock a loogie means to expectorate or spit out a generous supply of mucus thoughtfully stored in your throat and lungs. Some people find this easier to accomplish than others, especially if they are afflicted with chest congestion, smoke heavily or have few reservations about coughing up their own phlegm for visceral effect.
Sometimes a person may hock a loogie for purely medical, if not exactly aesthetic, reasons. Coughing up and expectorating excessive mucus from the throat and lungs can temporarily relieve the uncomfortable sense of fullness accompanying a chest cold. In a self-medicating sense, coughing up phlegm may be seen as the equivalent of sneezing to relieve nasal congestion. Perhaps the activity should be restricted to times when others are out of earshot, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with clearing an infected chest through productive coughing.
Others may decide to hock a loogie for a decidedly different reason, however. The act of spitting saliva on another person has a certain psychological effect, but the gesture is often intensified by generating additional mucus to form a much larger and insidious projectile. Recipients of a loogie assault generally remember the event long after the fact and recognize its underlying intent. To hock a loogie in anger is considered a serious escalation in playground warfare, and is generally reserved for the worst offenders.
The origin of the term loogie is a bit shadowy, but some suggest it is shorthand for a “lung booger,” the equivalent of thick nasal mucus which adheres to the sides of the lungs until forcibly ejected. Boogers and loogies are both favorite sources of gross-out humor by pre-adolescents who enjoy shocking their friends and families with inappropriate acts of spitting and expectorating mucus.