[Ads-l] Lewis Porter on the origins of "jazz"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

It's in the OED:

1918 J. Dos Passos _Jrnl._ 11 Nov. in _Fourteenth Chron._ (1973) 229 Talk is mainly of seasickness and the possibility of French jazz.

OED also has a 1920 example of the verb in a sexual sense.

Jesse Sheidlower

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 05:46:53PM +0100, Z Rice wrote:
> Porter states in his writeup on "jazz":
> 
> "Although a similar evolution happened to the word “jazz,” which became
> slang for the act of sex, that did not happen until 1918 at the earliest."
> 
> However, Porter doesn't mention what exactly the 1918 citation is or where
> it comes from. Does anyone have that information?
> 
> Link to Porter's writeup:
> https://www.wbgo.org/post/where-did-jazz-word-come-follow-trail-clues-deep-dive-lewis-porter#stream/0
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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