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

[Jonathan Lighter]

Green's "1896" cites the French verb "jaser," not the English word "jazz."
 Farmer's "Vocabula Amatoria" is a French-English glossary.

"Jaser," as I understand it, usually means "to gossip or chatter."

I'm unaware of any citation in French showing "jaser/ jazer" was used to
mean "to copulate."

Green's 1918, BTW, comes from a rare book cited in HDAS. I should have said
"1918, in Cary."

JL

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 9:29 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

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


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