Jook Joint

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, young lady, how are you today?

Well, I’m fine, sir. How are you, and who are you, and where are you?

My name is Jay, and I’m from Florida Home, Florida.

All right.

Well, Jay, it’s good to talk to you. How can we help?

Well, as a little boy, you know, growing up in northern Florida in a little small community, but the community was small where we had five juke joints, just like the regular juke joints where people go to dance. And I always wondered why they called it a juke joint. You know, because when I looked it up in Webster, it was a slang term, because there’s no, even though it’s a noun, because it’s a place. But as time went by, the actual word was jug, J-O-O-G. And as time went by, they took the G off and made it a K, so it would be easier to say. And so I did a little bit more looking into it. And come to find out that word J-O-O-G is a West African name. It means to jump up or move around. When you put that together with J-O-O-G, that means, you know, you go to a dance hall or whatever. And so that’s how that word migrated into the American mainstream of a J-O-O-G join or a J-O-O player or like that. Or you go J-O-O-K-ing. Even they use it in the NFL, like you J-O-O-K somebody, like you move around to make him miss you. That’s where that word came from.

Jay, this is great stuff, and I can add to what you’re telling us here. It’s a really interesting story because we’re pretty sure that the juke comes from—it’s interesting you say juke instead of juke. The word comes from one of three West African languages that have similar words in them, but this word appeared first among the Gullah people on the eastern seaboard in South Carolina and Georgia, all up and down there. And they opened up these gambling halls where you could get ladies of the evening and you could drink a rotgut and you could dance the night away and get in trouble. And the juke that you mentioned about jumping or moving quickly may be related to this, but it’s probably more likely these West African words meaning something disreputable or disorderly or about misbehavior. Although there’s an interesting note coming from the Scots language. There’s a word dating back to the 1700s, which sounds very much like this. It’s J-O-O-K or J-E-U-K. And it means a small shelter where you might hide out from a storm. And so it’s possible that all of these different meanings of juke came together and kind of reinforced each other and were applied to juke joint or juke joint.

Yeah, I mean, that word now, even though it doesn’t have the K or the EU part to it. You know, it’s part of the American mainstream nowadays, you know. Before, you know, it was pretty much like when they would call it on the titling circuit or something like that, you know. But now, part of the mainstream every day now these days, you know.

That’s exactly right. It shows up, one of the earliest uses of the term juke joint, actually she just calls it a juke, J-O-O-K, is in Zora Neale Hurston’s work, Jonah’s Gord Vine. And so we have it from an authoritative source in the African-American community that it was already by the 1930s well-known enough. Although she feels it’s not well-known enough that she has to include it in a glossary and explain it to her readers, which I found to be very, very interesting.

Yeah.

Jay, thank you for the call. We really appreciate it. And call us anytime. You’ve got something else to bring up. All right?

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for taking my call, you guys. Take care now.

All right, guys. Take care. Bye-bye.

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