jack

I. n

1.

nothing. This fairly widespread sense of the word may derive from an earlier and now obsolete sense of jack meaning very little or a small or insignificant amount. (A synonymous expression is 'jack shit'.)

► We didn t get jack.

2a.

a police officer

2b.

an informer

These British and Australian senses of the word have existed at least since the 19th century.

3.

meths (methylated spirits) as drunk by tramps, dossers, etc.

4.

money. A common term in the USA which is also heard in Britain and Aus-tralia.

► Listen, I just need some jack - in a hurry.

5a.

heroin. In the argot of prison inmates and addicts in the 1960s.

5b.

a single dose of a narcotic, specifi-cally a tablet of prescribed heroin or her-oin substitute

► I just scored ten jacks of H.

5c.

an injection (of an illicit drug)

Give me a jack of that shit you're banging. A term from the jargon of add icts si nce the mid-1960s, probably originating in Jack-and-Jill, rhyming slang for pill, reinforced by the verb jack (oneself) up, meaning to inject.

6.

British the anus or buttocks. A rarer euphemism than jacksie, typically used in provincial working-class speech.

► a kick up the jack

7.

venereal disease. In this sense the word is common in Australia, although it is also heard in Britain. The origin of this usage is either in archaic rhyming slang, 'jack in the box': pox, or from the archaic use of jack to mean the penis or semen.

8.

British

on one's Jack/Jack Jones, rhym-ing slang for alone

II. vb

American

to steal, rob, mug or hold up. The term, which became widespread in black street-gang jargon in the late 1980s, was probably a shortening of car-jack (itself modelled on hi-jack), describing armed holdups carried out on passing vehicles, a criminal fashion of the time.

► 'You come down here, you goin' get jacked for sure.' (Recorded, black youth, New York City, May 1995)

III. adj

Australian

fed up, tired, weary. To be jack of some-thing or someone has been heard in Aus-tralian speech since the early years of the 20th century. It is probably not directly related to the more recent near synonym jacked off.