释义 |
▪ I. jazz, n. orig. U.S. slang.|dʒæz| Also † jas, jascz, jass, jasz, jaz. [Origin unknown: see quots. for some of the many suggested derivations. Cf. jazzbo.] 1. A kind of ragtime dance (see quot. 19192); hence, the kind of music to which this is danced; (the usual sense) a type of music originating among American Negroes, characterized by its use of improvisation, syncopated phrasing, a regular or forceful rhythm, often in common time, and a ‘swinging’ quality (see quots.); loosely, syncopated dance-music. Connection with Amer. Eng. jasm ‘energy, enthusiasm’ (see Mathews Dict. Amer. s.v.) cannot be demonstrated.
1909C. Stewart Uncle Josh in Society (gramophone-record), One lady asked me if I danced the jazz. 1913Bulletin (San Francisco) 6 Mar. 16 The team which speeded into town this morning comes pretty close to representing the pick of the army. Its members have trained on ragtime and ‘jazz’. 1917Sun (N.Y.) 5 Aug. iii. 3/6 Variously spelled Jas, Jass, Jaz, Jazz, Jasz and Jascz. The word is African in origin. It is common on the Gold Coast of Africa and in the hinterland of Cape Coast Castle. Ibid. 3/7 Jazz is based on the savage musician's wonderful gift for progressive retarding and acceleration guided by his sense of ‘swing’. 1918Era 11 Sept. 21 John Lester's Frisco Five. The Jollities of ‘Jazz’. 1919Punch 12 Mar. 193/1 ‘Whitehall,’ says a society organ, ‘has succumbed to the Jazz, the Fox-trot and the Bunny-hug.’ 1919‘Monsieur Pierre’ How to Jazz 7 The Jazz is a three-step dance done to four-beat time. The three steps fall on the first three beats of the bar, the third being prolonged to last two beats, namely, the third and fourth. There are three distinct movements, which may be described as the Straight Jazz, the Side Jazz and the Jazz-Roll. 1920V. Lindsay Daniel Jazz 1 Daniel was the chief hired man of the land. He stirred up the jazz in the palace band. 1921W. Le Queux Secret Telephone 48, I was thoroughly enjoying a delightful jazz with the child. 1922C. Engel Discords Mingled (1931) 147 Jazz is rag-time, plus ‘blues’, plus orchestral polyphony; it is the combination, in the popular music current, of melody, rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint. 1925Amer. Mercury Sept. 7 According to tradition, jazz has taken its name from Jasbo Brown, an itinerant Negro player along the Mississippi, and later, in Chicago cabarets. 1927[see Beethovenized ppl. a.]. 1928Galsworthy Swan Song i. iv. 26 ‘The faster you can move your legs, the more you think you're dancing.’..‘You don't like jazz?’ queried the young lady. ‘I do not,’ said Soames. 1930Auden Poems 41 In a hot room with the sagging melody of jazz. 1933Fortune Aug. 47/2 Their use of ‘jazz’ includes both Duke Ellington's Afric brass and Rudy Vallée crooning I'm a Dreamer, Aren't We All? 1934S. R. Nelson All about Jazz i. 23 It has been suggested that jas, jass, jaz, jazz, jasz, or jascz were originally part of the patois of the Negro in his native Africa. 1937Amer. Speech XII. 180 Mr. Preston Jackson, negro trombonist of note, says that the ‘Creole Jazz Band’ was in New Orleans in 1911. Almost as early as that was the ‘Original Dixieland Jass Band’ which was the first of the lot to have the name printed on a phonograph record, 1917... The word ‘Jass’ was a verb of the negro patois meaning ‘to excite’ with an erotic and rhythmic connotation. Later becoming pronounced ‘Jazz’, it was used attributively to describe bands which by the intensity of their rhythm produced excitement. 1950N.Y. Times 30 June 21 Dr. Bender..was stumped by the word ‘jazz’. In..three years..he..tracked it to the West Coast of Africa, the contact point for the slave trade with colonial America. He said that the word meant ‘hurry up’ in the native tongue, and was first applied in the Creole dialect to mean ‘speed up’ in the syncopated music in New Orleans. 1952B. Ulanov Hist. Jazz in Amer. viii. 82 When..[Brown's] band came to Chicago, directly from New Orleans, the word ‘jass’ had a semi-sordid sexual connotation. Chicago Musicians Union officials..thought that labeling this group a jass or jazz band would be a very successful smear. But..the term caught on, and Brown's Dixieland Band became Brown's Dixieland Jass Band. 1955L. Feather Encycl. Jazz 50 Improvisation has always been the life blood of jazz. There are critics today who still claim that true jazz cannot be written down. This is not literally true, but it is true that orchestrated jazz, if it is to remain jazz, must retain the same rhythmic feeling, the same concept of phrasing, that is inherent in improvised jazz... Just as the three basic elements of music as a whole are melody, harmony and rhythm, the three additional elements essential to jazz may be said to be syncopation, improvisation and inspiration. 1955J. Jones in Shapiro & Hentoff Hear Me Talkin' to Ya 358 What is jazz? The closest thing I can get to saying what jazz is, is when you play what you feel. All jazz musicians express themselves through their instruments and they express the types of person they are, the experiences they've had during the day, during the night before, during their lives. D. Brubeck Ibid. 361 When there is not complete freedom of the soloist, it ceases to be jazz... If it's spontaneous, it's going to be rough, not clean, but it's going to have the spirit which is the essence of jazz. 1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) xxii. 282 We may define jazz tentatively as a semi-improvisational American music distinguished by an immediacy of communication, an expressiveness characteristic of the free use of the human voice, and a complex flowing rhythm; it is the result of a three-hundred-years' blending in the United States of the European and West African musical traditions. 1968A. Dankworth Jazz 1 Most jazz is in the form of melodic or rhythmic variations upon a theme. The theme is usually a twelve-bar blues melody, the chorus of a popular dance-tune, or a specially composed theme. 1970Melody Maker 12 Sept. 35/1 The essential motive of all jazz, at least through the end of the 1950s, was to relate to the audience through a steadily pulsing improvisational concept—in other words, to swing. Today we find young jazzmen effecting radical alterations in this objective. Much of the jazz presented by today's innovators avoids the free-flowing 4/4 or 3/4 essence in favour of a beat that is often heavier though not necessarily cruder. †b. A piece of jazz music. U.S. Obs.
1920Harvey's Weekly 24 July 14/2 That isn't a keynote; it's a jazz. 1921Ladies' Home Jrnl. Jan. 50 All the latest popular hits..all this season's jolliest jazzes. c. spec. A passage of improvised music in a jazz performance.
1926[see break n.1 9 c]. 2. transf. Energy, excitement, ‘pep’; restlessness, excitability.
1913Bulletin (San Francisco) 6 Mar. 16 What is the ‘jazz’? Why it's a little of that ‘old life’, the ‘gin-i-ker’, the ‘pep’, otherwise known as the enthusiasalum. 1922Dialect Notes V. 142 Jazz,..animation, animal good spirits. ‘She's just full of jazz.’ 1923L. J. Vance Baroque vi. 34 Only about enough heroin to give every man, woman and child in N'York the jazz for a week. 1924Galsworthy White Monkey ii. iii. 145 With all the jazz there is about, she'd appreciate somebody restful. 1928‘J. Sutherland’ Knot xii. 163 ‘What is really the matter?’ she asked. ‘You look extraordinarily queer, and you ought to be full of jazz.’ 3. Meaningless or empty talk, nonsense, rot, ‘rubbish’; unnecessary ornamentation; anything unpleasant or disagreeable.
1918Dialect Notes V. 25 Jazz, talk; ‘gas’. College students. 1930E. Pound XXX Cantos vii. 27 ‘Toc’ sphinxes, sham-Memphis columns, And beneath the jazz a cortex, a stiffness or stillness, Shell of the older house. 1936Harper's Mag. Apr. 567 The word jazz has been used to describe every disagreeable phenomenon since the year 1916, when it came into common use. 1944Metronome Apr. 22 Some of them [sc. swing musicians] use the noun ‘jazz’ to denote corn, especially those who are opposed to the Dixieland type of music and sum it up derogatorily with the word ‘jazz’. 1953D. Wallop Night Light iii. 153 What do you call that jazz, alpaca or something? 1958‘E. McBain’ Killer's Choice (1960) iii. 31 ‘How was school today, darling?’ ‘Oh, the same old jazz,’ Monica said. 1962M. Barrett Return of Cornish Sailor x. 129 All this jazz about your poppa and..his old ship, all that stuff. 1969C. F. Burke God is Beautiful, Man (1970) 20, I asked one of the young men if he understood what had been read from the Bible. His response was that he ‘didn't get that jazz’. 1971B. Malamud Tenants 165, I read all about that formalism jazz in the library and it's bullshit. b. Colloq. phr. and all that jazz: and all that sort of thing; et cetera.
1959F. Astaire Steps in Time (1960) i. 3 But it's nice to hear, ‘How does the old boy do it{ddd}why isn't he falling apart?’ And all that jazz. 1960Punch 9 Mar. 345/1 Politics, world affairs, film stars' babies and all that jazz, the things that the adult world seems obsessed with, do not interest us at all. 1968B. Turner Sex Trap ix. 69 Always been a good girl and all that jazz, but a bit stage-struck. 1972J. Porter Meddler & her Murder x. 132 Come to identify the body..and all that jazz. 4. slang. Sexual intercourse. Cf. jazzing vbl. n. 2.
[1924Étude Sept. 595/3 If the truth were known about the origin of the word ‘Jazz’ it would never be mentioned in polite society... The vulgar word ‘Jazz’ was in general currency in those dance halls thirty years or more ago.] 1927Jrnl. Abnormal & Social Psychol. XXII. i. 14 The word jazz... Used both as a verb and as a noun to denote the sex act,..has long been common vulgarity among Negroes in the South, and it is very likely from this usage that the term ‘jazz music’ was derived. 1950A. Lomax Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 47 Winding Boy is a bit on the vulgar side. Let's see—how could I put it—means a fellow that makes good jazz with the women. 5. attrib. and Comb., as jazz ballet, jazz band, jazz banjo, jazz club, jazz cult, jazz dance, jazz-dancing, jazz drum, jazz-drummer, jazz-drumming, jazz fan, jazz festival, jazz joint, jazz king, jazz-land, jazz-lover, jazz music, jazz musician, jazz opera, jazz orchestra, jazz-player, jazz queen, jazz record, jazz scene, jazz-singer, jazz song, jazz tune; jazz-conscious, jazz mad adjs.; jazz-loving, jazz-minded, jazz-oriented, jazz-struck, jazz-tinged ppl. adjs.; jazz age (freq. with capital initials), the era of jazz; spec. (see quot. 1959); jazz baby, a girl who is interested in jazz; a flapper; jazz poem, a poem that is read aloud to the accompaniment of jazz; so jazz poetry; jazz-rock, music that has the characteristics of both jazz and ‘rock’ music. Also jazzman.
1922F. Scott Fitzgerald (title) Tales of the jazz age. 1926Whiteman & McBride Jazz vii. 137 The jazz age has been the subject of profound and careful condemnation. 1959T. Griffith Waist-High Culture (1960) iii. 31 In the years between the Armistice and the stock-market crash, came the period we used to call..the Jazz Age.
1920F. Scott Fitzgerald in Metropolitan Oct. 65/2 Evylyn and Ben followed singing a drowsy song about a Jazz baby. 1964M. McLuhan Understanding Media (1967) ii. xxxi. 348 Baseball..will always remain a symbol of the era of the hot mommas, jazz babies..and the fast buck.
1961Webster, Jazz ballet. 1972Times 16 May 14/8 We have a jazz ballet by a Canadian choreographer, set to music that uses a string quartet and a rock quartet.
1916Ragtime Rev. Oct. 6/3 The ‘Jaz’ bands that are so popular at the present time. 1916Variety 27 Oct. 12/4 The Jazz Band is composed of three or more instruments and seldom plays regulated music. 1917Era 20 Aug. 20 Holborn Empire... Frank Powell and The Magleys and the Jazz Band. 1919, etc. [see Dixie2 1 c]. 1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) vii. 71 The 101 Ranch, a cabaret which employed many jazz-bands, was particularly famous.
1923Jazz banjo [see banjolin].
1917Spiker 25 Dec. 10/3 H. Williams, Rickard, Putney, Short, Hermann and Duncan were the Jazz Club entertainment committee. 1958New Statesman 25 Jan. 102/3 Our native music..still flourishes nightly in the jazz-clubs, though best in those where musicians..like to drop in for a little drinking, gossiping, watching the dancers..and perhaps sitting in with the band. 1968A. Diment Great Spy Race vii. 114 Past the pub with built-in Jazz Club.
1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) xxiii. 286 With the arrival of jazz-conscious American troops, the murmur of interest grew to a rhythmic roar.
1933Fortune Aug. 47/3 The jazz cult is apathetic to nine-tenths of modern dance music.
1919Punch 30 Apr. 333/3 An early bather was seen executing the Jazz-dance on the beach at Ventnor on Easter Monday. 1963Spectator 27 Dec. 852/1 In America the jazz-dance..has a validity as..a pop-art expression of one side of the national culture. Ibid., The so-called jazz-dancing which has insidiously crept into our ballet repertory.
1919Observer 16 Mar. 14/4 There has been a good deal of curiosity concerning the origin of the term ‘Jazz’. Authorities on Jazz dancing say it is a word used by niggers to denote a scramble.
1922Encycl. Brit. XXX. 796/1 The music..consists of various combinations, the most common of which perhaps is:—piano, violin, alto or tenor saxophone, banjo and jazz-drum. 1925Chambers's Encycl. VI. 302/2 The jazz-drummer, a sort of one-man band, provides the characteristic feature of jazz, which is noise. 1930Melody Maker Feb. 123/2 Murray Pilcer—Britain's first ‘jazz’ drummer and still going strong. 1956B. Edwards in S. Traill Play that Music vi. 59 There have been five major stages in jazz-drumming during the last three and a half decades.
1958D. Halperin in P. Gammond Decca Bk. Jazz xx. 241 Calling the young man..a jazz-fan would be off-centre: he is, rather, a jazz convert. 1961Observer 16 July 5/5 He caught on, first with his fellow college intellectuals and jazz fans (whom he still calls ‘my people’) and then with a wider audience.
1959‘F. Newton’ Jazz Scene xi. 184 ‘Jazz festivals’—in Newport, Conn., in Nice, Cannes, San Remo and other European holiday resorts. 1970New Statesman 9 Oct. 454/3 The crowd was very similar..to the audience that came to the Beaulieu jazz festivals.
1942Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §366/4 Dance hall,..jazz joint. Ibid. §576/27 Jazz King, Paul Whiteman, jazz orchestra leader.
1920Quill Sept. 6 They're the best jazz kings in the jazzy world. 1958Daily Herald 24 Mar. 2/4 Gladys Hampton, wife of jazz-king Lionel, arrived in London yesterday.
1942Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §578/2 Jazzland, the world of jazz.
1947Penguin Music Mag. May 30 ‘You can't make a gentleman out of jazz’—a perfectly true statement, and one which all jazz-lovers will applaud. 1974Guardian 22 Mar. 14/6 The European jazz lover can go to Harlem or New Orleans.
1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) xvii. 201 Jazz-loving record buyers wore out the grooves.
1924‘J. Sutherland’ Circle of Stars xxvi. 273 Far more dangerous to a silly, headstrong child than the jazz-mad boys she chose as habitual companions.
1955L. Feather Encycl. Jazz vii. 141 A style that was found palatable by many non-jazz-minded people.
1917Sun (N.Y.) 5 Aug. iii. 3/7 Jazz music is the delirium tremens of syncopation. 1922W. J. Locke Tale of Triona v. 51 The crash of jazz music welcomed them. 1941B. Schulberg What makes Sammy Run? iii. 46 It made me realize again how true jazz music was, how it echoed everything that was churning inside us. 1973Listener 19 Apr. 522/2 The excitement in jazz music is usually concerned with nerve.
1917Sun (N.Y.) 5 Aug. iii. 3/7 The jazz musicians and their auditors have the most rhythmic aggressiveness. 1969Jazz musician [see bit n.2 4 i].
1924N.Y. Times 18 Nov. 23/1 Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin might submit..a jazz opera to..the Metropolitan Opera House. 1970New Yorker 29 Aug. 22/2 Recently, I [sc. Rolf Liebermann] commissioned a jazz opera, because I think that is a way to make contact with.. young people.
1916Variety 27 Oct. 12/4 The low cost makes it possible for all the smaller places to carry their Jazz orchestra. 1925Scribner's Mag. July 45/1 The faint echo of a jazz orchestra in the background.
1955Keepnews & Grauer Pict. Hist. Jazz xv. 155/2 The personnel were primarily jazz-oriented musicians.
1918Quill June 31 (Advt.), Music and Entertainment by the original Jackson Jazz Players. 1958New Statesman 25 Jan. 102/3 Jazz-players and promoters..are so much more difficult to handle than the good old-fashioned pit and palais musicians.
1960Guardian 21 Nov. 7/7 A ‘jazz poem’ read at a recital of modern poetry and jazz.
1959Listener 26 Mar. 567/3 In the current craze for jazz poetry a mistaken attempt is made to bend the verse to the last of the music.
1922Canad. Mag. June 96 What will they make of a literature which is garnished with references to ‘snuggle puppers’ and ‘jazz queens’ and ‘flappers’ and ‘face dancers’?
1923H. Crane Let. 5 Dec. (1965) 159 We had a Victrola... Lots of jazz records, etc.
1970Americana Ann. 578 The year [sc. 1969] was flooded with such new combinations as jazz-rock, folk-rock, and country-rock. 1974Down Beat 18 July 26/3 Here are two exploratory jazz-rock albums.
1959‘F. Newton’ (title) The jazz scene. 1969Jazz scene [see bit n.2 4 i].
1927(film-title) The jazz singer. 1929A. Huxley Do what you Will 57 He is employed as a jazz-singer on the music-hall stage.
1923H. Crane Let. 9 May (1965) 133 Marvelous jazz songs, jokes, etc.
1947R. de Toledano Frontiers of Jazz vii. 82 The jazz-struck kids who are today the core of the non-commercial white bands.
1955L. Feather Encycl. Jazz vii. 227 A honey-toned, jazz-tinged, original song stylist.
1918F. Hunt Blown in by Draft vi. 144 This, he felt deep in his heart, might be a fighting army, but it was a jazz tune army. 1926[see classic n. 1 c]. 6. attrib., passing into adj. Of grotesque or fantastic design, marked by vivid or riotous colouring; also, lively, sophisticated, unconventional.
1919Punch 7 May 357 Jazz stockings are the latest thing. 1919Current Opinion Aug. 98/3 Boston is only slightly Jazz. 1922Glasgow Herald 14 Dec. 5 He has some justification for using this jazz language. 1923Daily Mail 5 May 8 Jazz patterns in dress. 1927R. H. Wilenski Mod. Movement in Art iii. 165 The ‘jazz’ curtains and sunshades..and the prevalence of bright tints in the theatre. 1928E. Weekley Eng. Lang. 76 The rather jazz-patterned idiom which is now spoken. 1930J. Collier His Monkey Wife xiv. 198 Drawing a jazz silk dressing-gown about her shoulders, she went to the bathroom. 1938S. M. Bessie (title) Jazz journalism: the story of the tabloid newspapers. 1957H. Croome Forgotten Place 15 A jazz-patterned carpet on the floor. ▪ II. jazz, v. orig. U.S. slang.|dʒæz| [Cf. prec.] 1. trans. To speed or liven up; to render more colourful, ‘modern’, or sensational; to excite.
1917Sun (N.Y.) 5 Aug. iii. 3/6 In the old plantation days when the slaves were having one of their rare holidays and the fun languished some West Coast African would cry out, ‘Jaz her up’, and this would be the cue for fast and furious fun... Curiously enough the phrase ‘Jaz her up’ is a common one to-day in vaudeville and on the circus lot. 1919Amer. Mag. Nov. 69/1 For ways that is dark and tricks which is vain, the daughters of Eve is peculiar, to jazz up a line of Bret Harte's. 1923Daily Mail 27 Mar. 8 My colour scheme is rather fetching, don't you think? X—a famous artist—jazzed it up for me. 1923Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves xv. 195 It's rather too late to alter the thing [sc. a little fairy play] entirely, but at least I can jazz it up. 1926[see gas n.2]. 1959Times Lit. Suppl. 2 Oct. 557/3 The ‘honesty’ and the depth of the rejection here carry no conviction and the attempt to jazz it up leads Mr. Sillitoe where we would expect it to lead him—to bluster and sentimentality. 1967Surfabout IV. iii. 33/2, I could hardly sleep at all; man, I was jazzed just listening to the hissing swells as they smoothly broke through the night. 1974Guardian 13 June 10/5 He..jazzes the mixture up with a series of film-makers' cliches that one can only describe as stylised film school. b. To play (music, or an instrument) in the style of jazz. Freq. const. up.
1919E. Scott All about Latest Dances 76 The nigger bands at home ‘jazz’ a tune; that is to say, they slur the notes, they syncopate, and each instrument puts in a lot of little fancy bits on its own. 1922C. Sandburg Slabs of Sunburnt West 6 Listen while they jazz the classics. 1934Hound & Horn VII. 599 The saxaphone..can be as ‘hot’ as the clarinet when it is ‘jazzed up’. 1934C. Lambert Music Ho! ii. 74 A Frenchman or an Italian might have felt some embarrassment about jazzing up the classics. 1965Listener 20 May 738/2 He had jazzed up Weill's music in the modern American manner. 2. intr. To play jazz; to dance to jazz music. Hence transf., to move in a grotesque or fantastic manner; to behave wildly (see also quot. 19182).
1918F. Hunt Blown in by Draft vi. 143 Ole Hen Sauser..started, walking up and down the black and white ivories until he had the brown box rocking and swaying and jazzing like eight electric pianos. 1918Dialect Notes V. 25 To jazz. 1. To talk to kill time. 2. To walk about to kill time. Rare. ‘I jazzed around all forenoon.’ 1919E. Scott All about Latest Dances 80 When the band is ‘jazzing’ along. 1919Punch 23 Apr. 318/1 She did not ask whether I could jazz, mainly, I think,because I had already danced with her. 1922Dialect Notes V. 142 You mustn't expect to pass your quizzes if you keep jazzing around like this. 1923Daily Mail 18 Apr. 8 There are a good many present-day books that just give the reader a view of the protagonists jazzing across the pages in a vivid pattern of action, passion or crime. 1934S. Spender Vienna ii. 23 Where radio crazily jazzes. 1966‘J. Hackston’ Father clears Out 19 Chester..waltzed, jazzed, did Catherine wheels, [etc.]. 3. trans. and intr. To have sexual intercourse (with). slang.
1927[see jazz n. 4]. 1929T. Wolfe Look Homeward, Angel (1930) ii. xiv. 176 Jazz 'em all you like,..but get the money. 1930J. T. Farrell in This Quarter July–Sept. 193 ‘She's cute. I jazzed her too,’ O'Keefe said. 1931G. Irwin Amer. Tramp & Underworld Slang 109 Jazz,..to have intercourse. 1948H. MacLennan Precipice (1949) i. 81 My sister was being jazzed by half the neighbourhood cats by the time she was fifteen. 1968B. Foster Changing Eng. Lang. ii. 114 The original verb ‘jazz’ denoting the human male's most important generic activity (itself probably an African word). |