Origin of Jamoke!

So back in college (6+ years ago), my friend Kate got me using the word "jamoke", as in "i had a meeting with those jamokes and it didn't go anywhere." I had no idea where that word came from, or what it literally meant... I just knew that it was a fun and easy term that was interchangeable with jokers, yahoos, folks, etc.

A few years back, I used it in a conversation at work. My friend Dan was horrified, claiming that the term was a racial slur against certain European groups and that I should be ashamed of using it. Man, did I feel awful... I apologized to my co-workers and swore to strike the word from my vocabulary. Well, it turns out Dan's a bastard and he was totally lying to me, cause he knew how I'd react. Of course, it's fucking hilarious that he pulled that off, but at the time I wanted to stab him in the eye with a fork.

Regardless, I'm back to using jamoke, and I finally realized I could probably learn the truth behind jamoke using that thing called the "internet". So I googled jamoke, and came up with this definition: "Jamoke is usually said to come from Java plus Mocha. When it first appeared, at the end of the nineteenth century, it literally meant coffee, and was sometimes written as Jamocha, which makes the origin a bit clearer (despite the coffee associations, linguists would say that the word is a clipped compound, not a blend ...)." OMG!!! Jamocha, as in JAMOCHA SHAKES!!!!

But more likely, the definition can be found in the next paragraph on that page: "Professor Jonathan Lighter, in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, suggests that jamoke was probably a nautical term to start with. He points out, too, that the evidence suggests it was a World War I soldier’s nickname, perhaps for somebody whose colour or intellect resembled a cup of coffee. Sometime before 1946 it took on a sense of “a stupid, objectionable or inconsequential fellow”, as Mr Lighter puts it. This sense has further evolved in some quarters into one for a dupe or sucker, and was a 1960s slang term for the penis. It has also been used more neutrally for guy or man."

So....... it's basically a slang for "guy", but apparently also can be used for "penis". I'll have to keep that in mind. And apparently it could even have a slight racial tinge to it, after all. :( But that usage is soooo uncommon, that I think I'll just go ahead and keep using jamoke for "guy", cause I just really like the word.

But now I know, and knowing is half the battle!