Jakey Bums

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Wendy Volker from Clifton Park, New York.

Hello, Wendy.

Hi, Wendy. How are you doing?

I’m great. How are you guys?

Super duper.

Fabulous.

Good, good. I am calling you about an expression that my grandfather used to use.

Oh, yeah?

He was a police officer and therefore used many colorful expressions, but most of them are not suitable for broadcast. But this particular one is the term Jakey bum.

Jakey bum.

Jakey bum.

And I’m assuming that the spelling of Jakey is J-A-K-E-Y. I know he used it to refer to undesirables that would hang out in the park, that kind of thing. And no one in my family knows where the phrase originated, came from, but he used to use it a lot.

And so your question then is, what does Jakey mean? Why did your grandfather start using it?

Right.

Well, when he called somebody a Jakey bum, was he referring specifically to people who showed signs of drunkenness or alcoholism?

You know, I don’t, I can’t say for 100%, but it seems very likely. Because Jakey as an adjective usually means drunk or showing signs of withdrawal from alcohol addiction, such as the delirium tremens or the shakes, the jitters, or even the jakes or the jake leg.

The jake leg is to have those terrible full-body shakes that happen when your body wants alcohol and doesn’t get it. And it’s got an interesting little back story, which is around the time of Prohibition, there was a very famous case of a type of, I believe it was Jamaican rum. It could be a different alcohol, but a type of alcohol that was poisonous.

There was some problem in the production, and it caused blindness, paralysis, and all kinds of bodily mishaps, such as the shakes and the jitters. And I believe the brand name had something to do with the word Jake, a Jake foot perhaps. And so this was widely known. A lot of people were injured by this. The story, of course, spread much further than the poisoning itself did.

And so you might describe somebody who’s had too much alcohol as being jakey, or if they have the shakes that are caused by withdrawal from alcohol, say that they have the jakes or the jake leg. It goes back to the 1930s or so.

I’m not surprised that your grandfather as a cop knew it, because it’s very much a part of a certain kind of slang having to do with the people who deal with alcoholics or deal with people who have alcohol problems in general.

So somebody who’s Jakey drank too much Jake, in other words.

Yeah, well, Jake is a generic synonym for alcohol, also exists as well. It’s much less common today. These days, Jake is a completely different word. It’s etymologically distinct, but to say something’s Jake would mean it’s okay or it’s great.

Oh, well, I haven’t heard that one either. I guess I learned two things today.

Great.

I wish my grandfather was around, that I could confirm that with him, but it sounds pretty right to me.

Thanks so much for your call today, Wendy.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

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