Jack

How to spell jack

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jack

What does jack mean?

1. nounA portable mechanical device for raising a heavy object, such as a car, a short distance off the ground.
2. nounA playing card ranking between the ten and the queen, also called the knave.
3. nounA socket into which a plug is inserted to make an electrical or audio connection.

Jack in a sentence

• He kept a jack and a spare tyre in the boot for emergencies.

• She drew the jack of hearts and laid it beside the queen.

• He plugged his headphones into the jack on the side of the laptop.

• The garage used a hydraulic jack to lift the saloon for repairs.

• Holding two aces and a jack gave him a strong hand.

• The old amplifier had a single jack for the microphone lead.

Where does jack come from?

Language of origin: Hebrew

Jack began life as a friendly nickname for the common first name John, which itself reached English through Old French Jehan from the Latin Johannes and ultimately the Hebrew Yohanan, meaning 'God is gracious'. Because John was so ordinary a name, by the late Middle Ages 'jack' had become a generic word for any common man, labourer, or hired helper. From there it spread to dozens of practical objects that 'do the work of a man', so a device that takes the strain of lifting a heavy load became a jack. The same logic produced the playing-card 'jack' (the knave who serves the royal court) and many compound tools and gadgets. The spelling has stayed simple and phonetic throughout, which is why the word is rarely written wrongly, and the everyday 'jack-of-all-trades' still carries that original sense of an all-purpose working man.

How the word is built

• jack (from the personal name Jack, a familiar form of John used generically for a man, a labourer, or a mechanical helper)