We all know what jaywalking is....crossing the street illegally. However, if cars are waiting at a stoplight, and you cross illegally in the middle of the street (not at a crosswalk), as everyone in Chicago does, as you cross in front of the stopped cars, there is a little lane before you reach the sidewalk. Oftentimes motorcycles or bicyclists will illegally travel in that little lane. What is it called? Actually, I jaywalked once and got hit by a bicyclist who was travelling in that little lane.

Until I started this thread, I had never understood the etymology of jaywalking. For some reason, I had thought it "J" walking and was thinking that you walk in a "J" formation. Strange, I know! However, it comes from the jaybird? The etymology said, "From jay, inexperienced person." Yet, whey I look up jay, it says "chatterbox," but nothing about being inexperienced.

So, I am totally confused tonight!

The Word Detective has this to say about "jaywalking".

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Back in the 1800's, country bumpkins visiting the city were called "jays" probably because bluejays are loud, brightly-colored and not-very-bright birds. Now, before the bluejay lobby gets on my tail about that characterization, allow me to point out that "jay" has been used as a synonym for "simpleton" since the 1500's, so it's a bit late to protest. In any case, these out-of-town "jays" were famous for being clueless. They wandered all over the city, gawked at the big buildings, bought the 19th century equivalent of "Cats" t-shirts, and blundered right into traffic whenever they felt like crossing the street. By the early 1900's, paying no attention to traffic signals or crosswalks was known as "jaywalking."

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Some streets here have a narrow "cycle lane" between the main part of the road and the kerb, but from your description I don't think that's what you mean. A you referring to the gutter (at least, that's what we call it here)? The gutter collects the water that runs off the road surface and channels it down the drains.

Some streets here have a narrow "cycle lane" between the main part of the road and the kerb, but from your description I don't think that's what you mean. A you referring to the gutter (at least, that's what we call it here)?
No, I definitely am not referring to a cycle lane because most of our streets don't have those. It isn't the gutter either because that's where the parked cars are. It is the space between the cars driving and the parked cars. Perhaps there is no name for it.

Back to the etymology of 'jaywalk'.

When Kalleh wrote 'The etymology said, "From jay, inexperienced person," she persumably was referring to AHD's etymology. And she's correct, for if you click AHD's link to 'jay', you find nothing about 'inexperienced'. It sounds like some sort of goof-up at AHD.

Word Detective, as arnie notes, traces 'jaywalk' to jay = country bumpkin, and says "jay" meaning "simpleton" traces back to the 1500s. But Wordorigins says jay = "stupid or annoying person" and dates to 1884 England. If the 1884 date is right, it's hard to believe that the word could have crossed the pond quickly enough to generate 'jaywalk' in the US.

Interesting. Neither site gives any sources, I am rather surprised at Wordorigins's exact dates. Slang terms exist for many years before anyone writes them down, so to assert that jaywalking dates from 1917 is almost certainly wrong. I checked a number of online sites but without finding any reference to the 1884 Victorian English use of jay. I did find a number of references that indicate it was used by American city-dwellers around that time to refer to country bumpkins and the like -- the sort of people who fall for the three-card trick.

I think we can be pretty sure that jaywalking is American in origin, IANAL, but I don't think jaywalking is an offence over here. It's not a word we would come across often and I've always thought of it as American in origin.

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I did find a number of references that indicate it (jay) was used by American city-dwellers around that time to refer to country bumpkins and the like -- the sort of people who fall for the three-card trick.

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I don't know whether you're talking about primary or secondary sources. In the database mentioned earlier I found a primary source, The Bowery And Bohemia [Scribner's magazine. / Volume 15, Issue 4, April, 1894]. The relevant passage is immediately above and below the illustration.

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I don't know whether you're talking about primary or secondary sources

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Only secondary sources, I'm afraid, which is why I didn't cite them. Mostly online dictionaries of slang, found by googling.

We can be pretty sure that Word Detective is wrong when it says, Back in the 1800's, country bumpkins visiting the city were called "jays" probably because bluejays are loud, brightly-colored and not-very-bright birds. ... "jay" has been used as a synonym for "simpleton" since the 1500's.

Not so: the bluejay is indigenous to the New World. Its range doesn't extend to England, and one doubts that such a usage could have been created and attested in the New World in the 1500s, so soon after Columbus. Either 'jay as simpleton' comes later, or it comes from some other species of jay-bird.

PS: Another problem is the very association of jay-birds with stupidity. It's just plain wrong to assert that jays are not-very-bright birds" (says Word Detective) or are "stupid" (Wordorgins). Jays are part of the crow family, which are highly intelligent among birds; see here,

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The jay (Garrulus glandarius) is a British bird, and so could be the source of the "simpleton" meaning. Although I have never heard of it used in this country in this way, it could well have died out over here but remained in use in America, used by Americans with their own bluejay in mind.

Having been born and raised in a woody area in New England, I can personally attest not only to the beauty of the bluejay but to its extreme intelligence as well.

We had one in our backyard that would regularly make a monkey of our golden retriever. If there's anything to this reincarnation business, there are worse things to come back as than a bluejay!

We have blue jays around here, and I agree that they are beautiful. However, I have no idea how to even judge if a bird is smart.

Word Origins says jaywalk "... comes from the sense of Jay meaning a stupid and annoying person, which dates to 1884 England and is a reference to the behavior of the bird called jay, which is stupid and annoying". This is only partly right.

One of the definitions of jay from the OED Online is:

3. transf. a. An impertinent chatterer. b. A showy or flashy woman; one of light character. c. A person absurdly dressed; a gawk or ‘sight’. d. A stupid or silly person; a simpleton. Also attrib. or as adj., dull, unsophisticated; inferior, poor (U.S. colloq.).

So one of the meanings was "a stupid or silly person", supported by an 1884 citation. But this meaning was U.S. colloq., not British.

The OED Online does not say that meaning was in reference to "the behavior of the bird called jay, which is stupid and annoying", as Word Origins says. I surmise that Word Origins inferred this from the "impertinent chatterer", "showy or flashy woman", "person absurdly dressed" meanings of the word. This is an easy assumption to make, since those meanings are all lumped together.

However, elsewhere the OED Online defines jake as "A rustic lout or simpleton: usually country jake", first recorded around 1854. Following a link to COUNTRY (definition 16) leads to "country jake, jay U.S. colloq., a rustic" (and "country Joan, an awkward country lass). It says jake probably came from Jacob.

So jay in the "country bumpkin" sense has nothing to do with the bird. Instead it apparently started as a derogatory name. Why the name Jake was picked I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out. It may be somehow related to the fact that Jake was a derogatory term for a Jewish man.

The Word Detective says "... 'jay' has been used as a synonym for 'simpleton' since the 1500's ..., but I haven't been able to find any other source that verifies that.

My interest in this subject perked up when I saw the reference to "country bumpkin". I was born in Kansas, the Jayhawk State, and I wondered if this meaning of jay had anything to do with Jayhawk. Fortunately it doesn't.

Jayhawk is a term for mythical bird, and was probably coined around 1848 or 1849. it was "... a combination of the blue jay (a territorial and often aggressive bird) and the sparrow hawk (a bold and fearsome predator) or maybe of some other kind of jay and some other kind of hawk". This article and its links talk about the several possible entomologies for this word. It also says that jays was a derogatory term for blacks.

Etymology Online says jay was slang for "fourth-rate, worthless" (1888), but it doesn't mention the "simpleton" meaning.

Tinman

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Somebody above questiond the idea that jay=bird --> jay='stupid person' --> jaywmalk, on the ground that the jay is not as stupid bird. You'll find an alternate route from the bird to the walker in Etymology On-line, which Tinman cited. It traces jaywalker to the bird's impudence, not to its (supposed) stupidity, saying, Jaywalker ... from notion of boldness and impudence.

This source talks about jaywalker,, not jaywalk. I recall that while researching this post I read (can't recall where) that jaywalker came first and led to jaywalk, instead of the other way around. Does this help our etymology-quest?

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