Emily Dickinson Lexicon

LOG, n. [This word is probably allied to. D. log, logge, heavy, dull, sluggish; a sense retained in water-logged; and to lug, luggage, perhaps to clog.]

1. A bulky piece or stick of timber unbowed. Pine logs are floated down rivers in America, and stopped at saw-mills. A piece of timber when hewed and squared, is not called a log, unless perhaps in constructing log-huts.
2. In navigation, a machine for measuring the rate of a ship's velocity through the water. The common log is a piece of board, forming the quadrant of a circle of about six inches radius, balanced by a small plate of lead nailed on the circular part, so as to swim perpendicular. – Mar. Dict.
3. [Heb. לג.] A Hebrew measure of liquids, containing, according to some authors, three quarters of a pint; according to others, five-sixths of a pint. According to Arbuthnot, it was the seventy-second part of the bath or ephah, and the twelfth part of a hin. – Johnson. Encyc.