Jinks Hoodoo again

Sat Apr 10 21:38:22 UTC 2010

Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Jinks Hoodoo again
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Clinchers?:
>
> 1893 _Logansport [Ind.] Pharos_ (Oct. 14) 4 (NewspaperArchive): "Little
> Puck"...will occupy the boards at the opera house Tuesday night....John
> Canfield as the unfortunate Jinks Hoodoo is amusingly grotesque,
>
> 1895 _Hawaiian Gazette_ (Honolulu) (March 19) 2 (NewspaperArchive): When
> they heard of the ship's escape the winners [in a shipboard card game] were
> glad and the  losers declared that Mr. Ficke was a genuine "Jinks Hoodoo."
>
> (Ficke, a gloomy ship's passenger, had constantly expressed a premonition
> that the ship would sink.)
> JL
>
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Jinks Hoodoo again
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> An earlier ex. of "Jinks Hoodoo":
>>
>> 1887 _St. Louis Globe-Democrat_ (Oct. 10) 6: George Woodward as _Dr.
>> Savage_, J. W. Summers as _Jinks Hoodoo_, and Bob Fraser as _Slaggers_ [or
>> perh. "Sluggers"- JL].
>>
>> This comes from a review of a comedy called _Little Puck_, which later
>> played in Brooklyn in 1888 and on Broadway in 1890. It starred Frank
>> Daniels
>> as "Packingham Giltedge." Acc. to the _Daily Inter Ocean_ (Chicago) (Sept.
>> 20, 1887), the play premiered in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 18, 1887.
>>
>> Acc. to the _Atchison Daily Champion_ of Dec. 23, 1885, "Bronson Howard has
>> written a new play for Frank Daniels. It is called 'Little Puck' and is of
>> the 'Rag Baby' order."
>>
>> _Little Puck_ was allegedly based on the novel, _Vice Versa_, by the
>> English
>> novelist Frank Anstey. A search of a reprint at Amazon.com finds no exx. of
>> either "jinks" or "hoodoo" in Anstey's novel. GB offers no text of either
>> the novel or the play.
>>
>> Regardless of OED/HDAS _jynx_, the name of "Jinks Hoodoo" is likely to have
>> been the immediate origin of the modern _jinx_. Howard may have been the
>> first to associate the name "Jinks" (cf. "Captain Jinks of the Horse
>> Marines") with the word _hoodoo_.  It seems that the name eventually came
>> to
>> denote the concept by metonymy (or is it synecdoche?).
>>
>> JL
>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>>
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>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>>> Subject:      Jinks Hoodoo again
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>> Here is a transitional instance of "Jinks Hoodoo", the apparent ancestor
>>> of the modern word "jinx". From the "Chronicling America" site.
>>>
>>> ----------
>>>
>>> _Salt Lake Herald_ (Salt Lake City UT), 24 Dec. 1895: p. 8:
>>>
>>> <<But a whole page of Herald and Tribune notices combined could not have
>>> rescued the affair from the failure to which it was foredoomed when its
>>> management was entrusted to the hands of a "manager" who combined in so
>>> eminent a degree the qualities of a Jonah and a Jinks Hoodoo.>>
>>>
>>> ----------
>>>
>>> Apparently this writer perceived a distinction of some sort between "a
>>> Jinks Hoodoo" and "a Jonah" (which seem to have been at least near
>>> synonyms). Possibly he took "Jonah" to mean "one who carries bad luck
>>> for his companions" and "Jinks Hoodoo" to mean "one who carries bad luck
>>> for himself [too]"?
>>>
>>> -- Doug Wilson
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
--

Here are my earlier postings:

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0403D&L=ADS-L&P=R5510

(general summary)

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404A&L=ADS-L&P=R2578

(one more example)

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504A&L=ADS-L&P=R5156

(earlier examples of stand-alone "jinx")

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401B&L=ADS-L&P=R1369

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401B&L=ADS-L&P=R1529

http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401B&L=ADS-L&P=R1752

(my original tedious exposition, including my guess as to why Jinks
Hoodoo was named "Jinks")

I read the Anstey novels on which "Little Puck" was based, and there is
no "Jinks Hoodoo" or the like in either: this name was presumably
invented for the play.

-- Doug Wilson

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