The J of an English dictionary has the look and smell of a London neighborhood that congealed around a cozy church with the privilege of sanctuary. J grew up fast, merry, and disreputable.
Not all of it. Soon you spot solid Roman matrons here. Noble refugees do their marketing awkwardly among the squatters and mongers. These Latin words were run off their ancient estates in sunny I-, evicted for no better reason than that the grandchildren couldn't be bothered to pronounce an "I" correctly. The injustice is not lost on them. In conversation, strive to avoid the topic.
Ask a J word its etymology and it is likely to mumble "unknown origin." J could be Vegas in the fifties, Frisco in the fifties before that. People who want to be seen without being found. It looks like the state capital of the witness protection program: sunglasses, scarves, brims drawn low, newspapers that flash up before the face as you pass a café. Here are words that have lost their papers and their marbles. Dr. Jekyll lives here, whose stately West End home had also a back door on a different, darker street.
Consequently the etymologies in the J of an OED or a comparable dictionary read like an almanac of rogues: "... of difficult etymology ... not impossible ... as yet unsupported by evidence ... the senses are more or less involved and inconstant ... of obscure history."
Even some of the best-known and most-used J words, like jam, jump, and job, are the questionmark's children. And the letter has the mother of all debatable English words: jazz.
Julep and jasmine go the long way round (Persian, Arabic, Latin, French) to get here, as though covering their tracks; so does jar (n.). Jolly can whistle for you in Germanic or Latin with equal enthusiasm. Don't dream you'll be the lucky one to solve the unsolved "j" words: jinx is among them.
It's a jay town, a place to go on a jaded jag. A jibber-jabber joint, home to jumpy sound-words with cloudy pasts or no pasts at all. They drive Jeeps and jalopies. They jangle, jumble, and jeer. They bring jam and junk; they coined the jukebox and the soda jerk. Jumbo Jabberwocky Jitterbug. Jargon itself lives here.
SAUCY JACK
Urchins are underfoot, gleefully swiping kerchiefs and fobs from pockets. The streets of J echo with their names. In the Church Latin J came to represent the Hebrew letter that sounded like the consonant -y-. One of the Hebrew God-names began with it, thus so did many of the Biblical given names. Thus Jesus, Judas and everyone in between. When the modern -j- sound emerged, the old names shifted to it.
The big names are here, the ones that overflow into common words, and do it profusely: The jills, johns, jimmies, and jennies. Entry after entry is a name. At times the dictionary columns of J resemble rows of lockers. You have to know your Jacobeans from your Jacobites or heaven help us Jacobins. They play on different teams.
Jack is the king of the pumpkin patch here in J. The nickname — it artfully claims different parents on different shores — has minions everywhere, in dog breeds, hammers, a kind of boot (but why?), and the device to remove boots; an ass, a daw, a pot, a child's game, a rabbit, a knife (but why?), a dive shaped like the knife, and a little flag on a big ship.
He's a rogue lord, but a man of the people. When the peasantry rose up in France in the Middle Ages it was called a Jacquerie.
Be prepared, then, to meet the gang: Jack-ashore (drunk, flush, and in high spirits), Jack Pudding (cousin germanic to Zan Salcizza). I've known jack-in-the-pulpit since my childhood by the woods. Jack Frost (cold), Jack Sauce (impudent), Jack Nasty-face (you don't want to know), Jack Sprat and seldom-seen Jack Weight, Jack Snip (ruined your gown), Jack-in-Office, Jack-out-of-Doors. Jacks aplenty.
The offspring naturally grow up shifty. Jack-in-the-box has been a sharp or cheat "who deceived tradesmen by substituting empty boxes for others full of money" (about 1600), a century later he was a type of spring-toy inside a box. Between and since his resume shows "peddler with a stall," "unborn child," "type of gambling game," "hermit crab," "large wooden male screw," and "the sacrament."
They used Jack in the 18th century as we used Joe in the 20th (Joe Cool, Joe Blow) to form all our casual, generic Joes. All of whom are here, too, roaming around in the J precinct. Along with Jane-of-Apes, who long predates ("pre-dates") Tarzan. (Hyphens matter.)
ETYMOGRAPHY
"No word beginning with J is of Old English derivation." [OED, 1989]
J is a latecomer to the alphabet. It was born without a sound. J is just what it looks like: An I with a tail. In Middle English texts it was a variant form of the Roman numeral i. On the continent, it also was used for the -i at the end of a word. (English used -y for that.) Medieval texts ran the words together; so the tailed -i warned the reader against running a word or number into the next one.
It got its sound in English in the early 17th century, to take up the consonantal sound that had evolved from the Roman i-. It was a marriage of convenience.
Scribe 1: Dang it, "I" doesn't sound like "I" anymore in some words, does it? We need a new letter for that. What's on the shelf?
Scribe 2: How about that "tailed I" thing that we use to write numbers? It's not busy. And it already looks like the I.
Scribe 1: Sold!
ROADSIDE ETYMOLOGY
Like W, many letters away, J's place is casual, slangy, sound-y. A jambalaya jamboree. In part because there is so little else to it. You could hide this many odd-job words in a sprawled city like C or P and they would not change the character of the place. Here, they do.
The J words sometimes come from afar. Jackal, java, and jungle are from India; jaguar is Central American. J is one of the few places in a (modern) English dictionary you meet undisguised Basque (jai alai). Jalapeno is Aztecan and might have birthed the jalopy.
Or not. Things are naturally unclear, the stories never quite match. Just ask jacinth. Who also goes by hyacinth. If you can find anyone who might know where she's hanging out these days.
Those Latin refugees are present, visible, in scattered clusters, trying to keep up standards. Not all are from letter I. Some Roman G- words got mushed to J- in French, and so English picked up joy, jay, jamb, jaundice, jelly, jest.
There's an odd house just beyond the old church. In it live journal, journey, and journalism, the last now a feeble recluse. All are from "day" words, Latin diurn-: an account of the days, days of travel. An initial -d- in Latin usually holds in French. But according to the French etymologists, that Latin -iu- quietly turns to a "j" sound and "ejects the d." A cruel cuckoo trick!
But most of the marble-and-toga here is Latin I- words dislodged by the medieval pronunciation shift. The join/junction family is one of them. The jet ("spurt") group is here as well.
It is well they brought juice, as they brought as well July. They have janitors to keep the riff-raff off, but the janitors were two-faced and admitted January. But like the Frenchified Latin, the Roman J words tend to come into English on the lighter side: Joke/jocular, junior/juvenile. The old sanctuary church advertises the sermon will be that joke is related to jeopardy.
And you lope into the last quarter of J, full of juvenile jocularity, jollified by juleps, and run smack into a badge.
The serious Romans are here. You face judge, justice, and jury. At the end of J stands the law of God and man, a justified jurisdiction. Your jokes fall flat. If you can't be judicial, try to act judicious.
Don't that sober you up in a hurry. In the whole dictionary there's no cold turkey quite like that, inside one letter. All those Old Testament names should have served warning. As you glumly clutch your various citations and schedules of fines to be paid, bid a fond farewell to J, land of joys and juries and pause to ponder the ways of the just.
The two justs stand at the boundary crossing into K like statues, one solid, one crumbled. The adjective keeps the Roman tone: "morally upright, equitable, fitting, reasonable." And the adverb, launched in English as "precisely, exactly," ran to seed.
From "exactly, punctually" it slouched into "nearly; almost exactly;" then by the 1660s to "merely, barely," as in just missed. A just-so story ("in that very way, o best beloved, the elephant got his trunk!") is unconcerned with truth or consequences, perhaps like these two: