jackpot

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 06:26:08PM -0400, George Thompson wrote:
>
> The current issue of Bloodhorse, a magazine devoted to
>thoroughbred racing, in its on-line form (bloodhorse.com) has
>an article on Bob Baffert, a trainer who has just been
>inducted into the sport's Hall of Fame.  He had begun his
>career in quarter-horse racing, and credits the experience
>with his later success with thoroughbreds.
>
> “It was a lot of trial and error—mostly error,” he
> noted. “You had to get to the point where you could fix
> problems. There was no medication. You used Absorbine and
> alcohol and rubbed those legs until the filling was
> gone. I’d rub for hours and get those legs tight while my
> dad sat on a bucket watching. I’ve seen every jackpot a
> horse can get himself into, and when a problem comes up
> today, I remember a horse having had it in the past and
> remember some off-the-wall remedy I learned working on those
> Quarter Horses.”
>
> This sense of "jackpot" isn't in the OED; oddly, though,
>among its array of quotations illustrating the sense of
>"prize", are two that certainly seem to really illustrate
>Baffert's meaning: "problem".

[...]

It is in the OED. OED has two senses; the second one is
defined as "(see quot. 1914)", where this is an entry in a
criminal slang dictionary which defines the word as 'a
dilemma; a difficult strait', etc.

At revision we'll define the sense in its own right, not just
point to another definition, and we'd probably separate the
quotations for clarity. But the sense is currently covered,
and the quotations that illustrate it do belong where they
are.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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