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jackdaw

Posted on March 6, 2011 | 5 comments

When I was in elementary school, one of the kinds of instructional materials I found most fascinating was something called a Jackdaw. I capitalize it because – though I didn’t know it at the time – it’s a brand name, the name of the publisher, in fact. Jackdaws were – still are, I’m sure, as they’re still in business (www.jackdaw.com) – fascinating collections of facsimiles of primary source materials about the various historical events they covered.

I had no idea at the time why they were called that. When one is six years old (and even much older), one may tend to accept the arbitrary nature of new names, assuming that there must be a good reason and perhaps eventually the reason will be revealed. Perhaps it was because they were in a jacket, like a Duo-Tang, and chock-full?

More likely, of course, is that they were acquisitive and loquacious. Jackdaws, like magpies, are known for stealing all manner of things and hoarding them; they are also know to be, well, not so much loquacious as garrulous – they chatter on and on, and can also be taught to say words.

So if you call a person a jackdaw, that means you think him or her to be kleptomanical, garrulous, a hoarder, or some combination of the preceding. And thus a folder that has collected a variety of items pertinent to a topic might fittingly be called a Jackdaw, overlooking the foolish connotations. It occurs to me that it also wouldn’t be such a bad name for the sentences known as pangrams, which have collected all twenty-six letters of the alphabet (e.g., Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz – my, doesn’t that sound a little, ah, you know). And Cambridge University calls its administrative database Jackdaw. It seems there’s a bit of a collection of jackdaws out there.

There is, mind you, a much larger collection of jack words – a veritable jackpot. Jack – from the name – has long since been a byword for the common fellow, and a name to be applied generically. Who leaves frost on your window? Jack Frost. Whose glowing eyes and crazed grin greet you on Hallowe’en? Jack-o’-lantern. Who can fix your broken Jack-in-the-box? Perhaps a Jack-of-all-trades. “Did the ship go down with all hands?” “Every man Jack.” “But doesn’t that bother you?” “I’m all right, Jack.” And there are several jack animals, including jackrabbit, jackass, jack salmon, Jack Russell terriers (OK, that’s an eponym), and of course jackdaw.

Jack is such a square, sturdy name to my taste, with a bit of a kick or a hack, sounding not unlike the call of the jackdaw. It begins with that first letter of so many first names, J, and ends with the open-beaked, angular k. It may have come from Jacques – although that’s French for James while Jack is a nickname for John – but it may have come from Jankin and Jackin, pet forms of the Dutch Jan.

And why jackdaw? Well, for the same reason as jackass, more or less, I suppose. That is to say, we could always just say daw. That’s the older, simpler name for the bird. It’s a Germanic-derived word – it’s first recorded in English in the 1400s, and almost before you could say “Jack Robinson” there was a jack on it.

And what, by the way, is the bird? A little black thing, Corvus monedula – related to crows and ravens (and why not, if it’s known for crowin’ and ravin’ like it’s stark mad?). It’s very gregarious, mates for life, and has flocks with a strict pecking order.

So the name itself is put together of two bits, this old daw and this generic jack of all sorts of trading. And it’s such a quintessentially English thing. Not just because of its origins, but because English is a jackdaw of a language if ever there was one: swiping bits from all over, learning to mimic new words, and generally not shutting up.

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Tagged daw, jack, jackdaw, word tasting notes

crackerjack

Posted on May 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

This word has such a nice, crispy, crunchy sound to it – it seems made to be followed by box, but, alas, the candied popcorn and peanut mix named Cracker Jack is now sold in bags. But this word predates the confection, though possibly not by all that much. Its approbative sense of “exceptionally skillful person” or “especially splendid thing” comes from the late 19th century, and seems to derive from a sense of the word cracker, as related to cracking as in cracking good and to crack as in a crack team, a crack shot, and so on, which in turn derives from the version of the noun crack that refers to a thing that’s all it’s cracked up to be, which comes from the sense of the verb crack meaning “boast,” which appears to come from the original sense “make a loud, sharp noise,” which has carried its onomatopoeia from the mists of the distant past. No doubt the similar word corker has had some mutual reinforcement effect with cracker too.

But, ironically, most senses of cracker applied to people are not especially positive. It has since the 18th century been a term of contempt for the “poor white trash” of Georgia and Florida, possibly from corncracker but possibly from the imputed boastfulness of the people of those parts at the time. It has more recently been a term of abuse for white people, a new version of honky. This sense is reputed to come from whip-cracker, i.e., slave-driver, but it could also originally have come from the term of abuse for poor whites of Georgia and Florida, who were least likely of those in their parts to have been slave-owners. Alas, its colloquial origins mean that there is not as much written record as we would like for tracing it. And in any event, if those using it now intend it to refer to a whip-cracker, then it does. But! None of this seems to relate to crackerjack at all directly!

We are left with the jack part, which is prima facie easier to deal with: it’s a generic term for a male, as in I’m all right, Jack, every man jack, swearing-Jack, Jack-o’-lantern, and a really quite large number of others. It’s the quintessential arms-akimbo word, found in such odd phrases as jack squat (another less polite word is more often used rather than squat). There’s far more about it to taste than I could possibly fit in here. Take tomorrow to think about all the echoes jack brings (including other jacks, be they audio, car, jumping, or the children’s game). And all this Jack from the name Jacques, the French equivalent of James (both of them come ultimately from Yakub, more closely represented in English by Jacob), though Jack is in English a nickname for John…!

So crackerjack may sound direct but traces back by a quite anfractuous track. And the mouthfeel is crisp and catchy, but the flavours are more packed than in a carafe of cognac or a flute of Krug. Bite in and savour… this word is an exceptionally splendid thing.