By Jingo

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Patrick. I’m calling from Morongo Valley, California.

Hello, Patrick. Where is Morongo? I don’t know. Morongo Valley.

30 minutes east of Palm Springs, sort of a couple hours east of L.A.

Okay, so you’re out in the desert. All right.

Welcome to the show, Patrick. How can we help?

Well, actually, I had a word I’ve been thinking about for some years now.

My dad talked about it a couple years back when I was in high school.

Jingo? I think it’s J-I-N-G-O.

So like something sort of jingoistic or something like that.

And I don’t know, we were talking politics and it came up and I was like, okay, you know, I didn’t really pursue it.

But I’ve always heard it’s been like sort of patriotic kind of thing or, you know, something like that.

You hear it in connection with politicians.

So I was just wondering if you guys could shed a little light on maybe where that came from.

Jingoism.

So you’re really, really rah-rah your country and go to war.

Yeah, you’re like hyper patriotic, right?

Yeah, that was my understanding.

Yeah.

We know where jingo comes from, and we know where jingoism comes from,

And we’ve got a pretty good history of it.

When it first appears in English, it appears as what all the dictionaries describe as a conjurer’s phrase.

So imagine that you’re in a market, and there’s all kinds of sellers,

But they’re also performers, and a couple of them are magicians,

And where they might say, ta-da, or presto.

Voila!

Yeah, they might also say, by jingo!

Oh, really?

Yeah, so when they’ve done their trick and the big reveal and the thing is gone or the thing has appeared, whatever the trick is.

Aver-cadabra.

Yeah, yeah.

So by jingle was something that you might say.

Wow.

That’s really interesting.

So fast forward quite a while.

The British were going to put a fleet in Turkish waters.

It’s a very complicated history.

It involves Russia and Turkey and the British as well.

This is in the 1870s or so, right?

The thing is, like, in order to support this movement, this fellow wrote this song that includes the word by jingo.

And it’s this hyper patriotic, crazy song saying that the British should go, go, go and fight this war and defeat the enemy and rah, rah, rah.

And by jingo features largely in the song.

And the song apparently was pretty huge for the time.

Right.

And and so jingoism comes from the use of by jingo in this hyper patriotic song supporting this British war.

Oh, that is bizarre.

Yeah, cool, right?

Is it possible to hear recordings of this song?

Yes, if you go to YouTube and look for By Jingo’s song, you’ll find it.

We’ll link to it on the website as well.

It’s pretty old-fashioned stuff, but it sounds like it would never be a hit today.

Yeah, yeah.

Today we would have maybe a techno song with a heavy guitar riff in the background

And somebody doing the cookie monster growl.

That might be our war song.

This would never be our war song again.

J-I-N-G-O?

No.

No.

Thanks for the earworm, Martha.

You’re welcome.

My apologies.

So, Patrick, that’s the short story of Jenga.

We’ll link to some online resources that explain it in full and talk about the conflict.

And we’ll also link to the song so people can hear it and sing along if they want.

Fantastic.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

I had no idea.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Now you do.

400 years old, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for calling, Patrick.

Yeah, thanks very much.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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