[Ads-l] a jeton for jitney and a certain law

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Fri Jul 10 13:47:09 UTC 2020


Silly searching story:
I was searching for more on jitney (a coin, mentioned here from 1899) and jetney (a small coach,  reported from 1898, twice)--maybe from jeton?--and maybe related stuff (e.g., gitney).  Prof. David L. Gold, on his website, announced two forthcoming articles on the etymology.   An earlier text there included: "7. In its present state, Stephen Goranson's  suggested etymology of gitney~ jitney rests on no verified evidence."   In the current text he mentioned "*jetonett."
To see if the latter might exist anyway I got just one hit, a Library of Congress catalog, which falsely OCR-ed a jumble of numbers as it. The snippet continued:
"PESSIMISM. See also Murphy's law; Optimism." )

SG




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