etymology - Did gamblers get their lingo "hijacked?"


The earliest reference to "hijack" that OED lists is from 1923.



1923 Lit. Digest 4 Aug. 51/3 ‘I would have had $50,000,’ said Jimmy, ‘if I hadn't been hijacked.’



But the etymology is listed as unknown.


Interestingly, I found several newspaper references to a poker game robbery in 1920 that seem to antedate the OED quote, although they all used a hyphen.


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Looking further, I found a 1916 newspaper reference to "hijacks," also referring to a poker game.


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Given that these references are poker-related, my immediate hunch was that the term may have originated as a gambling term. This doesn't seem far-fetched to me; Winning a poker hand with a high-card jack would be a figurative robbery of sorts in some poker variants.


Etymonline offers an alternative explanation:



American English, perhaps from high(way) + jacker "one who holds up" (agent noun from jack (v.)).



This explanation makes sense but appears to me to be a little bit misleading. It makes it sound as though "jacker" meant "someone who holds people up," i.e. robs them, but it actually seems to refer to "jack" as in "to hoist something up on a jack."


Having researched this into the two separate directions, I thought it was time to post a question.



  1. Is there any corroborating or invalidating evidence to the theory that "hijack" could have started as a gambling term?

  2. Is there evidence beyond speculation that it derives from hoisting a stolen good up with a jack?



Answer



Green's Dictionary of Slang has: "... according to Cohen, Studies in Slang II (1989), based on high jack, zinc ore, a term used c.1899 in the mines of Webb City, Missouri, then the world’s greatest lead/zinc mine. This zinc ore was more valuable than the basic lead among which it was found, and miners would steal it to further enrich themselves. The term was virtually SE [Standard English] by 1900, as are the later meanings referring to the holding up of vehicles, including aircraft, and the killing or ransoming of their occupants."


However, none of the citations actually given in GDoS antedate 1923, or suggest a gambling connection, so it looks as if your references are completely new material. There's a snippet view of Gerald Cohen's article here.


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