Definition of "jackstraw"

It was a cheerful reminder of one’s childhood, and another bond of sympathy between the various branches of the human race, however remotely separated from each other, to find the little shaven-pated lads playing ball in the streets of Hakodadi, or jackstraws within the domestic circle at home.

1856, Matthew C. Perry, Francis L. Hawks, chapter 23, in Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan‎, volume 1, Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson, page 466

If I wasn’t a good Christian, it’s on my naked knees I’d be saying my prayers and paters to every jackstraw you have roofing your head, and every stony pebble is paving the laneway to your door.

1907, John Millington Synge, The Playboy of the Western World‎, act 3

It was late February before the expedition entered the Coldwater, early March before it approached the Tallahatchie. Here it encountered afresh felled trees like endless bundles of jackstraws, thrown vigorously, crossed under water at every imaginable angle.

1912, Mary Johnston, chapter 5, in Cease Firing‎

The landlord strode on jackstraw legs across the room.

1983, Jack Vance, chapter 24, in Lyonesse

[They] had rather be called Sons of the Earth, provided it be their own Earth, (their own Native Country) and act like Men at home, then, being deſtitute of Houſe or Land, to relieve the neceſſities of Nature in a Foreign Country, by ſelling of Smoke, as thou doſt, an inconſiderable Fellow, and a Jack-ſtraw, and who dependeſt upon the good will of thy Maſters for a poor Stipend; [...]

1692, John Milton, “The Author’s Preface”, in [Joseph Washington], transl., A Defence of the People of England, […]: In Answer to Salmasius’s Defence of the King, [London?: s.n.], pages xvii–xviii

At the start of 1950, he was a jackstraw in Washington. Then he discovered Communism—almost by inadvertence, as Columbus discovered America, as James Marshall discovered California gold. By the spring of the year, he was a towering figure […]

1959, Richard Rovere, “What He Was and What He Did-1”, in Senator Joe McCarthy‎, Cleveland: Meridian, published 1963, page 4

Along the grass-grown wharves,—silver-gray piles which crumbled at the ends into a jackstraw heap of rotting logs,—there was no human stir.

1906 October, Henry Milner Rideout, “Captain Christy”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 98, number 4, page 452

He threw himself down on the far side and saw a white, hellishly misshapen creature pulling itself from beneath a jackstraw tumble of atlases and travel volumes.

1990, Stephen King, “The Library Policeman”, in Four past Midnight

[…] if you are my daughter, you shall wear these for your father’s sake!—How now, madam! Refuse me! I command you on your obedience to accept of this—I will not be a Jack-straw father—

1754, Samuel Richardson, The History of Sir Charles Grandison‎, London, Volume 7, Letter 11, p. 57