jasbo/jazbo (was Re: 1913 "jazz")

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU
Sat Sep 10 08:52:55 UTC 2005


On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 03:46:48 -0400, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

>I think the spelling is probably not significant. I think "jazbo" and
>"jasper" must be continuous in the sense "guy"/"fellow"/"rube"/"bozo"
>[mildly derog.]. It's not clear to me whether there is continuity with
>"gazebo" in the same sense.

So can we safely dismiss the derivation from "chasse beaux" (supposedly
'beau-chaser' or 'dandy' in New Orleans Creole French) put forth by
_Downbeat_ in 1958 and discussed in Merriam and Garner's article "Jazz -
The Word" (_Ethnomusicology_ Sep. 1968)? This has been accepted
uncritically by such references as Radford's _To Coin A Phrase_, McCrum et
al.'s _Story of English_, and Almond's _Dictionary of Word Origins_.


--Ben Zimmer



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