jack = 'quit; give up'

[Jonathan Lighter]

Maybe from "throw up" one's job?  Writers still used that idiom in 1919.

JL

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 7:16 AM, 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:      jack = 'quit; give up'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Not in HDAS and quite unfamiliar to me, but the context suggests that
> it wasfamiliar in Main in 1919:
>
> 1919 _Daily Kennebec Journal_ (Jan. 31) 6 [NewspArch.]: Since he
> jacked his job in Ginn & Co.'s publishing house in Boston when the war
> broke out...life has been one grand adventure for young Wescott. He
> longed for action and [etc., etc.].
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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