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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Green's Dictionary of Slang has a pertinent entry for the sexual sense
of the verb "jazz". The first citation in brackets is dated 1896. The
second citation in 1918 differs from the cite mentioned by Jesse.

jazz v.
https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/bua6kui

Click on the symbol appearing to the right of the timeline to see the
citation details.

Garson

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 1:14 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> See also our discussion in 2015 about "The Jazz Girls" appearing in the
> credits of the earliest known stag film, questionably dated to 1915.
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2015-October/thread.html#139468
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 12:59 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > > 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.
> > >
> > >
> > > 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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