Jynx
Pronunciation
- IPA: /d͡ʒɪŋks/
- Homophones: jinx
- Rhymes: -ɪŋks
Alternative forms
Origin
An adaptation of the Latin iynx ("wryneck"), itself an adaptation of the Ancient Greek ἴῠγξ ("Eurasian wryneckâ€, “Jynx torquillaâ€; figuratively “a spell or charmâ€, “passionate yearning"), quod vide for an explanation of the development of its senses.
Full definition of jynx
Noun
jynx
(plural jynges)- A bird, the wryneck (Jynx torquilla or Iynx torquilla).
- 1649, George Daniel, Trinarchodia: Henry V, line ccxcv:Where not a Silver Iyng, or Pigeon, fell To Pay the Markman.
- 1706, John Kersey (editor), Phillips’s New World of Words, “Jynxâ€:Jynx, the Wry-neck, or Emmet-hunter, or as some say, the Wag-tail.
- 1708, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London XXVI, page 123:The Jynx or Wryneck…I first heard this year on March 29.
- 1845, The Zoologist: A Miscellany of Natural History III, page 1,107:Its sharp and harsh cry, resembling a repetition of Jynx, Jynx, Jynx.
- 1857, Samuel Birch, History of Ancient Pottery (1858), volume I, page 297:A youth or females hold a bird, supposed to be the iynx, in their hands.
- (transferred sense) A charm or spell a jinx quod vide.
- ante 1693, Sir Thomas Urquhart (translator), François Rabelais (author), The Third Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, chapter i, page 23:These are the Philtres, Allurements, Jynges, Inveiglements philtres, iynges, et attraictz, Baits, and Enticements of Love.
- The name of an order of spiritual intelligences in ancient “Chaldaic†philosophy.
- 1655, Thomas Stanley, The History of the Chaldaick Philosophy (1701), page 17/2:Then is the Intelligible Jynx; next which are the Synoches, the Empyreal, the Ætherial and the Material; after the Synoches are the Teletarchs…Intelligent Jynges do themselves also understand from the Father By unspeakable Counsels being moved so as to understand.