Jackleg

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 09/30/2001 9:11:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU writes:

> When I was a kid and worked in my parents' paint and wallpaper store,
>  a 'jackleg painter' was a combination of several of the following
>  facts:
>
>  1) non-union
>  2) self-taught
>  3) unreliable (often suffering from painters' colic, although respected
>          professionals also suggered from this malady)
>  4) not full-time
>  5) not skilled (i.e., producing shoddy work, not just failing to
>  appear, failing to pay workers or bills, as is suggested in 3))
>  6) worked for less (obviously connected to 1))
>
>  In short, it was a "general negative," and any one of these features
>  might have been highlighted in a single instantiation.


In the fall of 1966 an acquaintance of mine boasted to me that he was "a good
jackleg psychologist."  He meant it as self-promotion, of course.  In fact
the only thing he was good at was self-promotion---his advice was generally
bad and I personally am convinced hurt the scholastic careers of several
fellow students.

In other words, he was unintentially being truthful about meeting criteria 3)
and 5) above.  The point however is that "jackleg psychologist" could and did
have a positive meaning.

Don't forget that there is in US culture a large set of legends of the
basement inventor, the skilled pioneer, the amateur who shows up the experts.
 This is not a myth---many many examples can be cited of each.

Conclusion:  "jackleg" can be either negative (as Dennis Preston cites above)
or positive, depending on context.

                      - Jim Landau

P.S.  I thought "instantiation" was a word used only by computer programmers,
but M-W cites "instantiate" as from 1949.