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

[Laurence Horn]

> On Mar 19, 2019, at 12:49 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
> 
> 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.

For those without access to the OED, here’s the latter cite:

1920   A. C. Inman _Diary_ 14 Apr. in _Inman Diary_ (1985) I. 167   He had had sexual relations with her (in his slang ‘had jazzed her’).

Pretty unambiguous.

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

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