jack = 'quit; give up'

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's true that the "up" doesn't appear in the text.

But it's "understood," so as to make my suggested etymology work out right.

JL



On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: jack = 'quit; give up'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When you "jack something up" you raise it "up."
>>
>> When you throw something up, you do the same thing.
>>
>> It's a kind of play on words.
>>
>
> Sorry. I missed the "up" in the original. Even so, it's still a very
> deep pun. I couldn't "pull it out," as we used to say in the Security
> Agency, WRT understanding what was being said in an intercepted voice
> communication obscured by static and and such.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



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