jazz

The origin of the word jazz is one of the most sought-after word origins in modern American English. Interest in the word – the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century in 2000 – has resulted in considerable research and the linguistic history is well documented. "Jazz" began as a West-Coast slang term around 1912. The meaning varied, but the word did not initially refer to music. "Jazz" came to mean "jazz music" in Chicago around 1915. Etymology The similarity of "jazz" to "jasm", an obsolete slang term meaning spirit, energy, and vigor, and dated to 1860 in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1979), suggests that "jasm" should be considered the leading candidate for the source of "jazz". A link between the two words is supported by a February 18, 1916 article in the Daily Californian which used the spelling "jaz-m", although the context and other articles in the same newspaper from this period show that "jazz" was intended. "Jasm" derives from or is a variant of the slang term "jism" or "gism", which the Historical Dictionary of American Slang dates to 1842 and defines as "spirit; energy; spunk." "Jism" also means semen or sperm, the meaning that predominates today, making "jism" a taboo word. Consistent with that etymology, the jazz composer Eubie Blake (b. 1887), when interviewed by a woman for Yale's Oral History of American Music project, refused to use the word "jazz" because he thought it was uncouth. Deepening the nexus among these words is the fact that "spunk" is also a slang term for semen and that "spunk"—like jism/jasm—also means spirit, energy, or courage (for example: "She showed a lot of spunk"). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, "jism" was still used in polite contexts. "Jism" or its variant "jizz" (which is not attested in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang until 1941) has also been suggested as a direct source for "jazz". A direct derivation from "jism" is phonologically unlikely. "Jasm" itself would be, according to this assumption, the intermediary form.