The word then occurs in Pantagruel’s voyage to the oracle of the bottle being the fourth and fifth books of the works of Francis Rabelais (London, 1694), by the English journalist and translator Peter Anthony Motteux (1663-1718), who uses by jingo to render French par Dieu ( by God) and sacré Dieu ( sacred God):īy jingo, quoth Panurge, the Man talks somewhat like, I believe him.Īnd if they were painted in other Parts of your house, by Jingo, you would presently conskite your self wherever you saw them.

In this text therefore jingo might be a mere piece of sonorous nonsense with an appearance of mysterious meaning. He that in his Youth has allowed himself this liberty of Academick Wit, by this means he has usually so thinn’d his judgment, becomes so prejudiced against sober sence, and so altogether disposed to trifling and jingling: that so soon as he gets hold of a Text, he presently thinks that he has catch’d one of his old School-questions and so falls a flinging it out of one hand into another, tossing it this way and that lets it run a little upon the line, then ‘tanutus, high jingo, come again’ here catching at a word, there lie nibling and sucking at an ‘and’, a ‘by’, a ‘quis’, or a ‘quid’, a ‘sic’ and a ‘sicut’ and thus minces the Text so small, that his Parishioners, until he rendevouze it again, can scarce tell what’s become of it. The word jingo first appeared as a piece of conjuror’s gibberish in The grounds & occasions of the contempt of the clergy and religion (London, 1670), by the English college head and satirist John Eachard (baptised 1637-died 1697): Meeting of jingoes in Guildhall, London – from Cassell’s History of England – vol.

Jingo audible