jazzed by jazz (teas) from san francisco irish american scoop gleeson-

[Gerald Cohen]

    Scoop Gleeson's 1938 article tells that he acquired the term
"jazz" from Call sports-editor William "Spike" Slattery, who had
recently picked it up
in a crap game. "Whenever one of the players rolled the dice he would
shout, "Come on, the old jazz.'"

    In Gleeson's first written use of the term (March 3, 1913), "jazz"
has an unfavorable meaning: "to the jazz" = "hot air, baloney"
"...McCarl has been heralded all along the line as a 'busher,' but
now it develops that this dope is very much to the jazz."

    Three days later, Gleeson uses the term "jazz" repeatedly in a
very favorable sense (vim, vigor, fighting spirit), almost as if he
had had a sort of Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus epiphany.  But the
starting point for Gleeson's use of the term (March 3) remains the
unfavorable meaning. He probably meant that the reports on McCarl
have as much validity as a crapshooting incantation would have
effectiveness, i.e., none.  In both cases we deal with mere empty
words.

    Since Gleeson didn't coin "jazz," the assumption that he coined it
based on an Irish word can be set aside with certainty.  The only
uncertainty here is where "jazz" in the crapshooter's incantation
came from.  My assumption (and maybe that of others too) is that it
comes from the 19th/early 20th century term "jasm" (force, spirit,
energy), and so the crapshooter was probably intending something like
"May the force be with me (as I roll the dice)."  Now, if Dr. Cassidy
could show that Irish "teas" (pronounced "jass") was used in Irish
crapshooting incantations of the early 20th century, then maybe this
"jass" could be considered as being behind "Come on the old jazz."

     Btw, Barry Popik has uncovered some articles on crapshooting,
with mention of specific incantations, but none contain "jazz"
(except for Gleeson's article, drawn to scholarly attention by the
late Peter Tamony).

Gerald Cohen

>At 2:02 PM -0500 3/27/03, Michael Cassidy wrote:
>Date:         Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:02:02 -0500
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>From: Michael Cassidy <Michael_Cassidy at CONDENAST.COM>
>Subject:      jazzed by jazz (teas) from san francisco irish american scoop
>               gleeson-
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>  PROPOSED ETYMOLOGY OF JAZZ AND JAZZY
>
>  by Daniel Cassidy
>
>
>
>  Jazz
>  Teas    (pronounced chass or jass)
>
>  Teas, g. -a, teais and teas, pl. -a, m. heat, warmth, sultriness;
>excitement, zeal, vigor; anger, pain. (Dineen, p. 1194, Irish-English
>Dictionary, Dublin, 1927)
>
>  Teas - Heat, hotness, warmth; Degree of hotness; ardor, passion; fervor;
>feverishness.  (O'Donaill p. 1221, Irish-English Dictionary, 1991)
>
>  Jazzy
>  Teasaí           (Pron. chassy or jassy)
>
>  Teasaí,   indec. adj.  Warm, hot; hot of temper (O'D, p. 1221).
>
>
>
>  The latest candidiate for  earliest first published instance of the word
>jazz (to date) adds weight to an Irish etymology for jazz, from the Irish
>head word teas (see below). It appears in a newspaper article by San
>Francisco Irish American journalist, Scoop Gleason (1913).
>
>  San Francisco has had a sizable native Irish-speaking population since the
>1850s -- and still does all throughout the Bay Area.
>
>  Like so many other so- "mysterious" slang terms Jazz and Jazzy are merely
>the English phonetic rendering of an Irish word or words, first written
>down in English phonetics by an Irish Americans or others, who first heard
>these terms in their families and in the multiethnic and Irish working
>class neighborhoods of San Francisco like old South O' the Slot and the old
>Mission District, where Peter Tamony himself was born and raised, a few
>blocks from where I now live.
>
>
>  In my own formerly Irish-speaking north Brooklyn Irish American family,
>"jazzy,"
>  and jazzed meant exciting, hot, passionate...as in "I was really jazzed by
>that gal,
>  or that's a jazzy dress, or "enough of that jazz," as in enough of that
>anger, excess passion.
>
>  A jazzy joint would not necessarily be a jazz club, but could simply be an
>exciting place.
>
>  Joint, of course, literally  means a warm shelter in Irish from díon te
>(Pronounced jynt). A  teasai díon te, means literally an exciting, warm
>dwelling of some kind.  Like a jazzy juke joint.
>
>  Add díuga, (pronounced jooka), which means to "drink to the dregs" and you
>get a jazzy juke joint that is hot and full of passion and may or may not
>play jazz.
>
>  I am really jazzed by the confirmation of Irish American source.
>
>  Jazzed in San Francisco,
>
>  Daniel Cassidy
>  Director
>  The Irish Studies Program
>  New College of California
>  777 Valencia Street
>  San Francisco, Ca. 94110
>  415-437-3402
>  irishstudies at newcollege.edu