[f. LOG sb.1 + ROLLING vbl. sb.]
1. U.S. The action of rolling logs to any required spot; a meeting for co-operation in doing this.
1848. Thoreau, Maine W. (1894), 19. Occasionally there was a small opening on the bank, made for the purpose of log-rolling.
1859. Miss Cary, Country Life, i. (1876), 7. It was less welcome than as if it had brought a log-rolling.
1883. C. H. Phelps, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 283/1. The great festivals of Western life are camp-meetings, barbecues, and log-rollings.
b. The action of propelling over the water a log on which one is seated.
1893. Westm. Gaz., 16 May, 5/1. For the special benefit of the distinguished spectators … an elaborate display of log-rolling was given.
2. U.S. slang. Combination for mutual assistance in political or other action.
Suggested by the proverbial phrase ‘You roll my log and I’ll roll yours.’
1823. Niles’ Weekly Reg., 7 June, 210/1. That sort of ‘management,’ now rather more fashionable, and known by the dignified appellation of ‘log-rolling’—that is, a buying and selling of votes.
1841–4. Emerson, Ess., Poet, Wks. (Bohn), I. 169. Our log-rolling, our stumps and their politics … are yet unsung.
1879. Times, 19 June, 11/2. The bribe was political preferment, or ‘log-rolling’—that is, help in passing other Bills.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., I. I. xv. 213. Corruption … appears chiefly in the milder form of reciprocal jobbing or (as it is called) ‘log-rolling.’
b. Mutual puffing in literary publications.
[1845. in Longm. Mag. (1900), Feb., 375. Somewhere in this book of Letters occurs, about 1845, the phrase ‘literary log-rolling,’ the earliest instance which one has met.]
1888. J. Payn, in Illustr. Lond. News, 7 Jan., 2. To have an eye to its [the book’s] merits rather than to its defects, is obviously log-rolling.
1889. American, XVII. 350/2 (Cent.). If by log-rolling is meant that reviewers praise people in hopes of being praised in turn, then the taunt is empty.
