jazz 的词源

到1912年，美国英语中首次出现了“jazz”一词，最早是在棒球俚语中；作为一种音乐风格，则在1915年被记录下来。这个词可能源自俚语jasm（1860年），意指“活力、精力、精神”，尤其是指女性的这些特质。也有可能是源自更早的gism（1842年），同样表达类似的意思。

By the end of the 1800s, "gism" meant not only "vitality" but also "virility," leading to the word being used as slang for "semen." But — and this is significant — although a similar evolution happened to the word "jazz," which became slang for the act of sex, that did not happen until 1918 at the earliest. That is, the sexual connotation was not part of the origin of the word, but something added later. [Lewis Porter, "Where Did 'Jazz,' the Word, Come From?" http://wbgo.org Feb. 26, 2018]

到19世纪末，gism不仅仅指“活力”，还引申为“男性气概”，甚至被用作“精液”的俚语。不过值得注意的是，尽管“jazz”一词也经历了类似的演变，最终成为性行为的俚语，但这种用法最早要到1918年才出现。因此，性暗示并不是这个词最初的含义，而是后来才被赋予的。[路易斯·波特，《“Jazz”这个词是从哪里来的？》http://wbgo.org，2018年2月26日]

“垃圾、不必要的废话或装饰”这一意义出现在1918年。俚语all that jazz（“等等”）首次记录于1939年。波特对研究的总结提供了更多的见解：

"Jazz" seems to have originated among white Americans, and the earliest printed uses are in California baseball writing, where it means "lively, energetic." (The word still carries this meaning, as in "Let’s jazz this up!") The earliest known usage occurs on April 2, 1912, in an article discovered by researcher George A. Thompson, and sent to me courtesy of [Professor Gerald ] Cohen.

... By 1915, jazz was being applied to a new kind of music in Chicago. It seems to have been first applied to Tom Brown's all-white band, which hailed from New Orleans. This was followed by many printed references to jazz as a musical style.

“Jazz”似乎起源于白人美国人中，最早的印刷使用是在加利福尼亚的棒球报道中，意指“活泼、充满活力”。（这个词至今仍保留着这个意思，比如“让我们来点 jazz！”）已知的最早用法出现在1912年4月2日，研究者乔治·A·汤普森发现了一篇相关的文章，并由[杰拉尔德·科恩教授]提供给我。

… 到1915年，“jazz”被用来指代芝加哥的一种新音乐风格。最初是指汤姆·布朗乐队，这支全白人乐队来自新奥尔良。此后，越来越多的文献开始将“jazz”作为一种音乐风格进行记录。

“加速或活跃起来”，1917年起源于 jazz（名词）。相关词汇包括 jazzed 和 jazzing。