Jassum, that Vigor and Vital Force

Hey there, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Joseph from North Carolina.

We’re glad to have you. What’s up? Yes, so the word that I’m wanting to find some information on is the word jasim. This was a word that was used in my family. I don’t know if it’s a real word. I don’t know if it’s just something that we, our family made up, but it was mainly used by my grandmother, which is what we called Meemaw, which was my dad’s mother.

And basically, the phrase that was used was, you know, you better eat your jasm. Like, it was in the context of eating and food. So, basically, if whatever food that you did not eat, like, whatever you didn’t clear your plate from, that’s what you had to eat for breakfast the next day. So, if it was, you know, so if you don’t, you know, if you didn’t clean your plate, you had to eat your jaslam, which was what you had to eat the next day for breakfast.

If you spelled that, how would it go? Oh, gosh. If I had to spell it, I would say J-A-S-O-M-E or J-A-S-U-M. Okay. Yeah.

I think we can help you here, partly because there’s an entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English. It only has two citations. But there’s a related spelling. And I’ll get to the spelling predicament in a minute. There’s a related spelling that can mean gravy or sauce or even the juice from a rotten apple. And the spelling is interesting for a couple reasons. It’s often spelled J-A-S-S-U-M or J-A-S-M or J-A-Z-M. All the S’s are placed with Z’s.

And get this, this is probably the same word that is the source of the word jazz, as in the musical form, J-A-Z-Z. And it all goes back to this idea of vigor, energy, pep, or a person’s vital force. And this idea of it being your vital force connects to this idea of food, right? Where do you get your vital force from? From eating. It’s your fuel. It’s literally your fuel.

And this is what made it become the word for jazz, the music form, because it was about your essential nature as a performer, right? So all of these are all connected to this really complicated family of spelling and meanings, but all of them have this idea about your vitality.

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting that you’re saying it’s kind of a term used for like vigor and energy, but the way it was kind of mostly used, and I guess the way we used it was almost more like a punishment. Yeah. So you didn’t finish your dinner, then you had to eat your jasmine the next day.

Yeah, the semantic shift from meaning your essence or the essence of food into food remains, it’s kind of a logical path. So I could see it. My confidence level of all this is not high, however. I’d say maybe 60%, 70%. But that’s the best information that I have to try to help you narrow this down. It sounds believable to me.

Thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it, Joseph. Thank you for having me. All right. Take care now. Take care, Joseph. All right. Bye-bye.

What’s the word or phrase that’s been floating around your family for years and you all just can’t figure out its origin or whether other people use it? You can call us to talk about it, 877-929-9673, or send it an email, words@waywordradio.org.