"Jazz"--1909 attestation is non-existent; baseball context (1912-1913) is still the original one

[Gerald Cohen]

   The 1909 attestation of "jazz" is non-existent, and its inclusion
in OED2 is now recognized as an error by the editor of the dictionary.

     See David Shulman's article "The Earliest Citation of _Jazz_" in
_Studies in Slang_, part 2 (ed.: Gerald Leonard Cohen), Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 1989, pp. 120-124. With several months of research,
Shulman convincingly rejects the existence of the 1909 attestation of
"jazz" in the Oxford English Dictionary, Supplement (now OED2).  Dick
Holbrook (in: "Our Word Jazz". Storyville--Dec. 1973-Jan. 1974), pp.
46-48) had already suspected that the 1909 attestation did not really
exist, although at the time Shulman did his research on the alleged
1909 "jazz", he was unaware of Holbrook's pioneering effort. Holbrook
therefore deserves credit for being the first to question the
validity of the 1909 attestation, while Shulman deserves credit for
being the first to treat the subject in detail.  The supposed 1909
attestation of "jazz" was passed along in error to OED by Peter
Tamony, who heard it on a later version of a 1909 record without
double-checking to see if it was on the original (1909) record). This
leaves the 1912-1913 attestations (in a baseball context) as the
first ones.

Gerald Cohen
author of "'Jazz' Revisited: On The Origin of the Term--Draft #2";
in: _Comments on Etymology_ (which I edit), Dec. 2002/Jan. 2003
(double issue), 91 pp.


At 9:04 PM -0700 8/18/03, Jonathan Sharkey wrote to 19cBB group:
>from my buddy the etymologist editor (all jazz and no base ball):
>
>
>---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
>From: "Brick" <bricknfyl at hotmail.com>
>Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 12:37:28 -0700
>
>To add to the confusion (and my own comments are at the very
>end):
>
>
>jazz - 1909, Amer.Eng., first recorded in lyrics of song "Uncle Josh
>in
>Society," where it apparently refers to a style of ragtime dancing; as
>a
>type of music (originally to accompany the dance), attested from
>1913.
>Probably ult. from Creole patois jass "strenuous activity,"
>especially
>"sexual intercourse" but also used of Congo dances, from jasm
>(1860)
>"energy, drive," of African origin (cf. Mandingo jasi, Temne yas),
>also
>the source of slang jism.
>
>http://www.etymonline.com/j1etym.htm

[snip]