(By the way, the jinks in high jinks is unrelated. With this in mind, some etymologists have proposed a different origin of the word: a late 19th-century musical comedy called Little Puck, which features a character named Jinks Hoodoo, who evidently is cursed with bad luck. The theory has some weight and is backed by print evidence, but the question remains as to why the preference in spelling changed from jinks to jinx in the early 1900s.
The sudden shift in spelling from jinks to jinx is hard to explain, as is how the name of a nonnative bird associated with medieval sorcery nestled into the slang of early 20th-century American sports. That term in jail put the jinks on Donlin. The Cincinnati team has done with Mike Donlin for good, and it is not likely that this ex-Californian will cut much ice from now on.
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Christy Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch, 1912īut in earlier citations of the word, the spelling jinks is found.Īnyone who can furnish reliable information leading to the conviction of the miscreant who put a "jinks" on the Los Angeles baseball club’s batting eyes last spring will likely receive a free pass for the rest of the season by advising Manager Morley. Bob Enos avers that Owner Annis appears to be the jinx of the local club and that the players are getting so that they hate to have him meet them on the road.Ī jinx is something which brings bad luck to a ball player. It is more popularly known to the layman as a hoodoo, but the ball players themselves call it a jinx. Of course everyone has heard what a baseball jinx is. Use of jinx in English dates to the beginning of the 20th century as an American slang term in sports-in particular, baseball. Etymologically, this sounds convincing-however, evidence of the first use of the word doesn't corroborate this theory. In time, the name jynx came to be associated with bad luck. In medieval times, this odd bird was thought to have occult powers and was used in witchcraft, divination, and magic. The bird is so named from its peculiar behavior of snakily writhing its neck when alarmed.
The word is suspected to be an alteration of jynx, the name of the wryneck woodpecker that populates Eurasia and Africa. The first to call out the word avoids the "jinx" (or "curse") whereas the other is caused to endure some form of "torture"-oftentimes, it's not being allowed to speak until somebody says his or her name, or owing the other person a Coke.Įtymologists aren't exactly sure how the word jinx developed. Most of us are familiar with the children's game of jinx, in which the word jinx is called out when two people unintentionally say the same thing at the same time.
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