Coinage of "Carjacking" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 8/20/2012 3:04 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> ....
> I'm always skeptical of claims of the first, or of coinage, especially
> when the claimer is Wikipedia.  Did Bowles and Mitchell pick the term up
> from cops who were working the crimes?
--

I tend to be skeptical of such claims too.

My quick archive search fails to refute this one. However it seems like
a somewhat natural coinage which might even have been made more than
once independently.

I note that "car jack[ing]" previously had (and still has, I suppose)
another routine sense: a car typically has a 'car jack', designed for
jacking up the/a car, for various purposes such as changing/stealing a
wheel.

-- Doug Wilson

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