jammer(s)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

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http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/swimming/news?slug=ap-swm-swimming&prov=ap&type=lgns
"For the preliminaries Thursday night, Crocker inexplicably came out wearing
a jammer -- a suit that goes only from the waist to just above the knees --
and put up the 13th-fastest time, coming perilously close to missing out on
the semifinals."
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"A jammer"? Not "jammers" (in the dual pattern of "pants", "trunks",
"shorts", etc.)?

I presume "jammers" is a shortening of "pajamas" -- as is "jams", or "Jams"
in its proprietary version. (Jams World was founded by Dave Rochlen in 1964,
online sources say. OED2 has "jams" from 1966 in Australia, with the Jams
trademark showing up in 1971.)

"Jammers" goes back to 1966 on Newspaperarchive:

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Oakland (Cal.) Tribune, June 15, 1966
"An all new assortment of swimwear including Hawaiian jammers"
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Oakland (Cal.) Tribune, June 28, 1966
"From the South sea islands our jammers in bold island prints"
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But so does "jammer (style)" used attributively:

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Daily Review (Hayward, Cal.), May 25, 1966
"Boy's 'jammer' swim trunks"
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Daily Review (Hayward, Cal.), June 30, 1966
"'Jammer' style boxer swim trunks in bold South Sea Island prints"
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Port Arthur (Tex.) News, May 15, 1968
"Student Size jammer-style swim trunks"
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No sign of singular "jammer", though.


--Ben Zimmer

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