jammock or jammuck (verb)
Herefordshire, Norfolk, Shropshire, Suffolk
To squeeze, press, crush – a derivative of jam in its sense of ‘press tightly’. Animals – and sometimes humans – who were jammocked were ‘worn out, exhausted’. From Norfolk, of a donkey purchased for little money on account of an injury: ‘it was not so malahacked [disabled] as to be jammucked for all that’.
janjansy (adjective or noun)
Cornwall
A two-faced person. Someone would be called ‘a janjansy’ or have ‘a janjansy look’. The word is an adaptation of Janus, the Roman deity who guarded doors and gates, who was represented with two faces – one on the front and one on the back of his head.
jawbation (noun)
Hampshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Sussex, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
A long and tedious harangue; a scolding, severe lecture, or reprimand. From Lincolnshire: ‘She nearly drove me scranny [crazy] with her jawbation’. In Yorkshire, and probably elsewhere, such a person was described as jawbacious: ‘loquacious’.
jawmotry (noun)
Lincolnshire, Yorkshire
Used especially in the phrase out of jawmotry, ‘out of shape or order’. In the plural, it was used to describe objects that were in shreds. From North Yorkshire, describing a garment hanging in rags in the wind: ‘It’s all hung i’ jawmatrees’. The spelling hides the unexpected origin: geometry.
jice see chice
jobbernowl (noun)
Devon, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Scotland, Suffolk, Yorkshire
A dunce, dolt, blockhead. From Yorkshire: ‘This is no work for a jobbernowl’. The second part of the word is well-known: a noll is an old Anglo-Saxon word for a head. But whence jobber? It may have developed from a French word, jobard, ‘fool’, that came into English in the Middle Ages. That in turn seems to have come from the Biblical character Job, who was accused of being a fool by his family and friends. A small family of related words developed. If you were jobberheaded you were stupid. If you were a chatterbox, a nonsense-talker, you were a jobbernowt.
jounce (verb)
Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk
In gardening: to rake very fine. ‘I’ve jounced that flower border all over’. The word could also mean ‘to rock a child or cradle, as in, ‘She jounced the babe on her knee’, and this suggests a phonetic source, as it echoes other words with a meaning of sudden movement, such as bounce, flounce, pounce, and trounce.
jubbity (noun)
Yorkshire
A difficulty, vexatious occurrence, misfortune. ‘He’s had some jubbities in his lifetime’. The spelling hides the relationship with standard English jeopardy. Trouble in general was jubberment, and sometimes jubblement.
jurgy (adjective)
Shropshire
Contentious, inclined to pick a quarrel. ‘The agent wuz mighty jurgy, I ’ad t’ mind whad I said to ’im’. The origin is unclear, but there was a Latin word, jurgium, meaning a brawl or contention, which might be connected. On the other hand, similar sounding words with similar meaning also exist, such as jar, so the source might lie there.