Moscow youth, 2013
13 March 2024
The etymology of jejune is a pretty much straightforward one, but the history of the word provides a good illustration of two processes. One, you can clearly see how the word was borrowed from Latin and then anglicized. And two, one of its present-day meanings came about via an erroneous assumption about its etymology.
The word comes from the Latin jejunus meaning fasting, going without food, and in fact there is an obsolete English sense of jejune meaning just that. But the Latin word can also mean meager, unsatisfying, without substance, and this sense also exists in the English record as far back as the hungry one, that is to the turn of the seventeenth century, if not earlier.
We can see the pattern of borrowing into English begin in a commonplace book (manuscript) owned by King Henry VII (1457–1509) that was printed and published in 1599. A commonplace book is personally curated collection of essays, poems, quotations, etc. The word appears in a poem comparing a woman’s beauty to that of goddesses, reminiscent of the Judgment of Paris from Greek mythology:
If that among those faire godeses, thou faire godes hadst ben,
Thou hadst surpast them (there, as a fourth Godes) all.
Iuno, she how ieiune? Now pale had Pallas apeared?
And Venus how vainelike? Thou then an only godesse.
Note that jejune is not only wordplay on the name Juno, but it is italicized in the published text. From the early days of printing through the eighteenth century, it was a common practice for printers to italicize proper names, but adjectives would only be highlighted if they were deemed to be foreign or unfamiliar. So here we have the word being used in an English text, but it has not been fully adopted into English yet.
Sixteen years later, we see jejune without italics, but still connected by allusion to the Latin. This appears in the “Dedication” at the beginning of George Chapman’s 1615 translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Chapman (c.1559–1634) was a contemporary of Shakespeare and the first to make complete translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey into English. (When I was getting my degree from the University of Toronto, the English Department’s softball team was dubbed Chapman’s Homers. That’s the second-best team name I’ve ever encountered, beaten only by the team fielded by the university’s Centre for Medieval Studies, who were the Papal Bulls. But I digress.) The relevant passage read:
To many most souer aigne praises is this Poeme entitled; but to that Grace in chiefe, which sets on the Crowne, both of Poets and Orators; τὸ τὰ μικρὰ μεγάλως, καὶ τὰ κοινὰ καιίνως: that is, Parua magnè dicere; peruulgata nouè; ieiuna plenè: To speake things litle, greatly; things commune, rarely; things barren and emptie, fruitfully and fully. The returne of a man into his Countrie, is his whole scope and obiect; which, in it selfe, your Lordship may well say, is ieiune and fruitlesse enough; affoording nothing feastfull, nothing magnificent.
While Chapman’s use of jejune is not technically a translation, it appears immediately after the Latin. But it is not italicized. It is in the process of being assimilated, but it still requires some explanation for readers to understand.
But that same year we also get jejune used in English both without italics and without any direct reference to the Latin. From a religious treatise by Calvinist theologian Thomas Jackson:
Euen after the infusion of faith most perfect, faithfull repentance for sins committed, is as absolutely necessarie to saluation, as the first iufusion [sic] was. Nor is this heauenly pledge, while dormant, though truely dwelling in our soules, immediately apt to iustifie: their conceite of these great mysteries is to ieiune & triuiall, which make iustification but one indiuisible transitory act, or mutatum esse, from the state of nature to the state of grace.
That covers the traditional meaning of jejune and how it was adopted into English. But the word has another meaning in present-day English, that of childish or naïve. That sense arises in the late nineteenth century and may be from a mistaken idea of the word’s etymology. People evidently thought the word came from the Latin juvenis, which gives us juvenile and junior, or the French jeune (young). Or it could simply be a development from the sense of meager, unsatisfying.
The earliest use of the childish sense that I have found (there are undoubtedly earlier ones to be found) is from the New York newspaper Truth of 17 June 1883. It is in an article about the arrival of militia in Peekskill, New York for their summer training:
Jejune school girls gathered upon the street corners, exchanged chews of gum and undying affection, and imparted to each other in strictest confidence the conquests of Sister Jane and Cousin Molly in formdr [sic] campaigns, and their hopes and plans for the coming struggle. But to this picture of jollity and happiness there was a lining of misery which exhibited itself in the sour looks and monosyllabic answers of the bucolic youths, who foresaw the oblivion to which they were consigned for the next three months at least by the advent of the gay “sojer laddies.”
The childish sense may have started out as an error, but it can no longer be considered to be one. The meaning of words is ultimately determined by how they are used, not where they come from.
Sources:
Chapman, George, trans. Homer’s Odysses. London: Richard Field and W. Jaggard for Nathaniell Butter, 1615, sig. A4r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
The First Booke of the Preseruation of King Henry the VII. London: R. Bradock, 1599, sig. N4r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Jackson, Thomas. Iustifying Faith. London: John Beale, 1615, 256. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“Our National Guard.” Truth (New York City), 17 June 1883, 1/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. jejune, adj.
Photo credit: Katya Alagich, 2013. Flickr. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
