English "jitter" from German "zittern"?
Douglas G. Wilson
douglas at NB.NET
Sun Dec 24 03:25:54 UTC 2006
In the absence of evidence (paper trail), various guesses can be entertained.
If the word originated in German, I would naively speculate a US origin
(perhaps NY Yiddish) rather than European.
In the 1930's there were "jitter-juice", "jitter-sauce", etc. = "booze", I
think.
-- Doug Wilson
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