[Ads-l] jawbone = credit

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sun Aug 13 14:26:58 UTC 2017


As DCHP-2 puts it, "presumably because the jawbone had to be exercised in
speaking to win over the creditor."

http://www.dchp.ca/dchp2/Entries/view/jawbone

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 7:32 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>
wrote:

> It strikes me that "jawbone" meaning credit (i.e. being able to borrow or
> raise money) could have come from the idea that to get access to credit you
> had to do a lot of jawboning, i.e. pleading and persuading.
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list