"Jazz" did not have a sexual origin

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:15 PM -0600 2/27/01, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>     The supposition that "jazz" has a sexual origin is almost
>certainly incorrect. In 1913, _S.F. Bulletin_, "jazz" was
>specifically discussed as a new word. It was introduced by baseball
>writer Scoop Gleeson and then used repeatedly by him in the meaning
>of "energy, vim, vigor, fighting spirit." (The term was only later
>applied to music). There seems to be no chance at all--none,
>zero--that "jazz" could have had a sexual meaning prior to 1913
>without the worldly wise sports writers of the San Francisco Bulletin
>knowing about it.
>Gleeson himself later reported that he acquired the term "jazz" from
>the sports editor of _The Call_, Spike Slattery, who had recently
>heard the crapshooting incantation "Come on,the old jazz."  This
>"jazz" probably derives from a term "jasm" (= force), and the
>incantation probably meant: "May the force be with me."
>
But if anything such a connection between "jazz" and "jasm" calls
into question the claim in the subject line, given the fact that the
latter looks for all the world like an ablaut variant of "jism",
which can hardly be claimed not to have a sexual origin.

larry