16 August 2010

"Jay-walking" explained

When I was growing up, I assumed the term referred to the non-linear (J-shaped) path one might take when crossing the street illegally.    Not so, as explained at World Wide Worlds:
From around the last quarter of the nineteenth century, jay had been a slang term in North America for a stupid, gullible, ignorant, or provincial person, a rustic, bumpkin or simpleton. I would guess it refers to the noisy chattering of these conversational birds. The jay that I sometimes see on country walks, the European species, belongs in the genus Garrulus and garrulous is just the right word for it — jay was an insulting term for a foolish chattering person back in the 1500s. It’s not hard to see how country cousins, unversed to city ways, could have had this well-established sobriquet attached to them by supercilious metropolitans.
Apparently in the early 20th century the term "jay driver" was similarly used:
Ogden Standard, Utah, 18 April 1906. Other newspaper examples from the same period suggest that the prime characteristic of a jay driver was that he wandered about all over the road, causing confusion among other drivers. It was explained in the Emporia Gazette of Kansas on 13 July 1911: “A jay driver is a species of the human race who, when driving either a horse or an automobile, or riding a bicycle on the streets, does not observe the rules of the road. It is the custom of the jay driver to drive on the wrong side of the street.”
I presume John Walkenbach knows all about this...

3 comments:

  1. It's good that you mentioned J-Walk.
    I found http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/ because of http://j-walkblog.com/
    Excellent sites, both of them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I started blogging, I featured J-Walk in one of my early posts -

    http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2008/11/j-walk-highly-recommended-blog.html

    - because it was one of my role models on how to manage a blog. I still read it every day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Also in county jails here in California, specifically the Bay Area (but my guess is that its usage extends much further) the term "J-Cat" is used to describe any inmate who is not in his or her right mind. It can also apply to someone who is far too comfortable with their situation and actually appears to be enjoying their incarceration.

    ReplyDelete

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