MDMD: catching up

[Terrance]

Don Corathers wrote:
> 
> I'm running some distance behind the MDMD, having arrived just last night
> (with great pleasure) at the Vroom household, and working my way through the
> several hundred accumulated posts in my inbox.
> 
> I hope the list will forgive this retrograde post, but I wanted to see if
> anyone could shed any light on a language note that as far as I can tell
> wasn't discussed the first time through:
> 
> "Some would call her a Frigate, though officially she is a couple of guns
> shy, causing others to add the prefix 'Jackass,'--a nautical term." (36:1-2)
> 
> Is it? I'd appreciate hearing from anybody who has encountered this usage
> before.
> 
> Slang dictionaries I've consulted have not been informative on the matter,
> but I can think of a lot of instances in which "jack" as a prefix is used to
> indicate inferiority, or a counterfeit or ersatz quality. There's jack shit,
> meaning not even quite as good as shit. Jackleg, which has the sense of
> "makeshift." Jack off. Jack knife, not quite a real knife. In certain
> working class restaurants in the midwestern U.S., the only fish on the menu
> is called jack salmon, which is actually cod, breaded and deepfried. (It is
> my astonishment at this phenomenon that first caused me to reflect on the
> meaning of "jack," some years ago.)
> 
> This all seems consistent with the Seahorse being labeled a Jackass Frigate
> because it doesn't qualify as a real one with the requisite number of guns.
> After the first reference, Pynchon (or Capt. Smith) takes the trope in
> another direction, adapting the combat tactics of the jackass to a ship
> called horse.
> 
> Any of you jack tars have any insight into "Jackass" as a nautical term?
> 
> Don

It's a nautical term. 

I posted a bunch of stuff on it. And a nautical dictionary. 

http://www.sailingships.hnpl.net/pages/picspgs/jackassbarques.htm


Outa here too. 

Why should anyone post anything here? 

MDMD is dead if you ask me. 

See ya'll if Pynchon publishes another book. 

Say, good article on Moby-Dick and reading books in The Wall Street
Journal today. 

Just another Fascist out of my league, 

T