"in a jiffy" antedated (?) to 1780

[Stephen Goranson]

1780 The Town and country magazine, or universal repository ..., Volume 12, Feb, 1780, p. 88 col. 1 [google ORC "jiffs" corrected in the first case]:
Most of the limbs of the law do every thing in a _jiffy_, but ask what they mean, and they would be as much puzzled, as if you required of them the explanation of a common act of parliament. If such gibberish were confined to hackney ...
...that she could turn Sir William B________ round her finger in a _jiffy_.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-wM3AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA88&dq=%22in+a+jiffs%22&hl=en&ei=v1yUTaH9M5HmtgeH94GLDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22in%20a%20jiffs%22&f=false

cf. 1791 Poems, miscellaneous and humorous
Edward Nairne
... and bus'ness slack,
 I stept to Joe's, and got a snack, J
 A pot of mildchee §, and a whiff, 4
 And off again in half a jiff! ...
[footnote] Jiff or jiffy, a jocular expression, and means a short space of time. Innumerable are the expressions  (particularly amongst sailors) ....

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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