英语词汇jinx的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

jinx. Baseball Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson was among the first to use the word in print when he wrote in his Pitching in a Pinch (1912): “A jinx is something which brings bad luck to a ballplayer.” Big Six didn’t know that the word may owe its life to a bird called the jynx, which was used to cast charms and spells. The jynx, known in America as the wrynecked woodpecker or wryneck, takes its name from the Greek iynx for the bird. In the Middle Ages this rara avis, with its gro- tesque, twisted neck, its odd breeding and feeding habits, its harsh, strident cries during migration and its near silence the rest of the time, was thought to have occult powers. Jynx feath- ers were used to make love philters and black-magic charms, the bird’s name itself coming to mean a charm or spell, espe- cially a black-magic spell, on a selected victim. It’s easy to see how the slang term jinx arose from jynx, but the long flight of the jynx from medieval times to the printed page circa 1912 is not easily explained. That’s why the O.E.D. and Mencken don’t attempt to give the origin of jinx. Webster’s admits the jynx version, however, as does the Random House Dictionary and other sources. Partridge traces jinx to the old Scottish word jink, “to make a sudden turn,” “the implication being [that jinxes] are all twisters.”

词汇	jinx
词源	jinx. Baseball Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson was among the first to use the word in print when he wrote in his Pitching in a Pinch (1912): “A jinx is something which brings bad luck to a ballplayer.” Big Six didn’t know that the word may owe its life to a bird called the jynx, which was used to cast charms and spells. The jynx, known in America as the wrynecked woodpecker or wryneck, takes its name from the Greek iynx for the bird. In the Middle Ages this rara avis, with its gro- tesque, twisted neck, its odd breeding and feeding habits, its harsh, strident cries during migration and its near silence the rest of the time, was thought to have occult powers. Jynx feath- ers were used to make love philters and black-magic charms, the bird’s name itself coming to mean a charm or spell, espe- cially a black-magic spell, on a selected victim. It’s easy to see how the slang term jinx arose from jynx, but the long flight of the jynx from medieval times to the printed page circa 1912 is not easily explained. That’s why the O.E.D. and Mencken don’t attempt to give the origin of jinx. Webster’s admits the jynx version, however, as does the Random House Dictionary and other sources. Partridge traces jinx to the old Scottish word jink, “to make a sudden turn,” “the implication being [that jinxes] are all twisters.”
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