[2019-10-19] “Jinx” is a word it seems you don’t hear very often anymore. Fortunately, Google has a way to investigate that! There’s a tool called Google Ngram which shows the occurrence of a particular word or phrase in literature over time.
Using Ngram (the green line), you can see that the use of “jinx” in English has not changed much over the last century. Now you’ll notice that around 1940, suddenly the use seems to increase greatly. Well, it turns out there was a Hollywood star named Jinx Falkenburg, nicknamed “Jinx” by her mother, whose modeling and acting career began to take off in the late 1930s. Once she became more famous, other women named their girls “Jinx”, and between that and mentions of the original Jinx, that usage became higher (the red line in the Ngram chart). [Jinx Falkenburg died in 2003.]
Well, seeing a lot of references to Iynges and the Jynx bird in old esoteric writings, I decided I would find out the origin of the term “jinx” and how it was related to those Latin and Greek terms.
I spent money on a book called “The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology”. (Not in order to look up “jinx”; I thought it would be a good reference to have.] So, great, I have this venerable reference right on my shelf. Under “jinx” it reads
“(U.S.) person or thing that brings bad luck. XX. Of unknown origin.”
The “XX” indicates the century in which the first use of the word was recorded.
Well, that’s sort of B.S.; it’s not that simple. The term was used in early 20th century baseball slang and did refer to a superstition that would cause a player or a team bad luck. So we have to turn to other sources.
The Online Etymology Dictionary gives: “wryneck,” 1640s, from Modern Latin jynx (plural jynges), from Latin iynx (see jinx). As “a charm or spell,” 1690s.
The wryneck was a bird used anciently in divination. Its name, and probably its use in fortunetelling, derived from its ability to turn its head around 180 degrees. The wrynecks (genus Jynx) are a small but distinctive group of small Old World woodpeckers. Jynx is from the Ancient Greek iunx, the Eurasian wryneck. We all know “J” is a weird letter in English, that’s a subject for other peoples’ blogs. One of the poor bird’s unwilling uses was a charm to bring back an errant lover, the bird being tied to a piece of string and whirled around. Ugh.
I wanted to look it up in my Websters Third but that’s got a huge stack of junk piled on it that I’m afraid to try to move.
2022-02-24 — OK, I moved all the junk on it, so now I can give an update. Looking up “jinx” you get “n. & v. [See JYNX] Hoodoo. Slang.” Well, now we have to see what they mean by “hoodoo”, so that leads to “voodoo” which has the meaning you probably expect.
But under “jynx” you get: So under “jinx” it gives: “[Slang] Hoodoo.”, and if you look up “hoodoo”, it points you to “voodoo”, which has the meaning you probably expect. But under turning to “JYNX” there are two entries: “jynx” and “Jynx”. “Jynx” is an actual zoological term referring to European woodpecker subfamily mentioned above. In olden times, these birds were referred to in England as “wrynecks”. And under “jynx” just above that entry, there are indeed two definitions: 1. The wryneck. and 2. A charm, a spell. This is briefly explained in the etymological clause for jynx: “[NL., pl jynges, fr. L. iynx the wryneck (used in charms)]”. Basically corroborating what the Online resource tells us above.
This is the kind of thing I find fascinating and is probably why my brain is so cluttered with trivia at this point.
Thanks for reading; this entry might change over the years but as of the last entry…what you see is what I know.
EOOUO(&)OE 