Reading the entire dictionary front to back! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. Jinkies, we’ve made it to the letter J!
The first “real” word under J is jab, which is “to thrust quickly and abruptly,” or just “poke.” Kind of suggestive-sounding. This is followed by jabber, “to talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly,” and then a non-capitalized jabberwocky, which is “meaningless speech or writing.” The brilliance of Lewis Carroll goes unmentioned.
And then we’re right into one I’ve never heard before, jabot. This is “a ruffle worn down the front of a dress or shirt.” When are ruffles making a comeback?
Jack gets a lot of definitions, including a device to raise heavy objects, a pointed metal piece used in a game, a type of flag, and a playing card. It’s also “a male donkey,” which I didn’t know. This kicks off a whole series of words with jack- as a prefix, including jackanape, “an impudent or conceited person,” jackdaw, “an Old World black and grey crowlike bird,” and jackhammer, “a pneumatic precision tool for drilling rock or breaking pavement.” Is it really precision?
Then there’s jacket, which has one of the word origin thingies in brackets, telling me that it’s named for the French Jacques. Now I want the story of this Jacques who was so famous that all jackets are named after him.
More fun with animals! A Japanese beetle is “a small metallic green and brown scarab beetle from Japan that is a pest on the roots and grasses as a grub and on foliage and fruit as an adult.” Awfully judgmental to call these little guys a pest, but then I’ve never had one eat my roots and grasses.
And now the question of how to define the undefinable. Jazz is “American music characterized by improvisation, syncopated rhythms, and contrapuntal ensemble playing.” Great, now I have to go all the way back to C for contrapuntal, which is “of or relating to a counterpoint.” Any music experts want to weigh in how accurate this is?
Things get dark with jeopardy, “exposure to death, loss, or injury.” Imagine if the game show took this literally.
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