jackleg
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A type of drill operated by means of compressed air.
noun
A shyster or con artist; a gambler who cheats; a generally dishonest or reprehensible person.
American usage
Example Sentences
- "1841, Letter to the editor, The Southern Planter, Volume I, No. 1, January 1841, p. 12, The next year I had a projecting kind of jack leg carpenter, from Hanover, living with me in the capacity of overseer […]"
- "1941, Martha Colquitt, Interview published in Slave Narratives, Library of Congress Project, Volume 4: Georgia Narratives, Part 1, Grandma didn’t think chillun ought to see funerals, so de first one I ever seed, wuz when ma died two years atter de War wuz done over. A jackleg colored preacher talked, but he didn’t have sense ’nuff to preach a sho’ ’nuff sermon."
- "1957, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Wolfbane, Chapter 11, in Galaxy Science Fiction, He was a doer, not a thinker; his skills were the skills of an artisan, a tinkerer, a jackleg mechanic."
- "At the gas station on the corner, a jackleg work crew was attaching plywood to the windows."
- "The little nosy reporter with the hair was fair crazy to come, but McGinty gets a jackleg doctor to examine him an’ swear that he’s sufferin’ from spatulation o’ the medulla oblongata, housemaid’s knee, and the hives."
- "Villard’s great fortune should not be allowed to “dangle” in plain sight of “jack-leg lawyers,” while he, Parkins, awaited final results of the proceedings."
Etymology
From jack + leg. Compare blackleg (“a person who replaces striking workers; a cheater”) and such expressions as jack of all trades, every man jack.
Usage
- American usage