2628: Jack Feb 25, 2022

There are a number of card standard decks around the world and while they tend to base the cards in some real thing, those things are also old fashioned in many ways, partly as a result of it all being translated from the French tradition. People know what kings and queens are, but the use of ‘jack’ is somewhat odd in that group. It used be ‘knave’ which was the equivalent to the French ‘valet’ (which is also a loanword in English) meaning ‘servant’ and as with most words with that meaning, also ‘boy’. ‘Jack’ on the other hand came as a nickname from ‘John’ and was used as a term to denote a normal man. Compare this with the French ‘Jacquerie’. Indeed, this word began to denote male animals (jackass; jackrabbit; jacksnipe) and also laborers (lumberjack) and tools therefor (jackhammer; jackknife). It is from this sense as a workman that it replaced ‘knave’ in a deck of cards, and also of course when the cards are abbreviated, having a K for ‘king’ and also Kn for ‘knave’ would be confusing. Despite this gain in clarity, the use of ‘jack’ in place of ‘knave’ was seen as being low-class and did not catch on immediately but one should keep in mind not all decks used indices anyway. ‘Jack’ also began to denote small things, such as ‘naval jack’—a national flag flown on the bow—along with the many uses in tools and games it has.