I think I read this in a Ray Bradbury story a couple of decades ago. In it, a robot that had gone off its programming said ‘So, jeet your seat. All reet, all reet!’
What does the phrase mean? ‘All reet’ is obviously a ‘hipster’ way of saying ‘all right’. But what about ‘jeet’? Since Bradbury’s stories seem to have an early-20th Century flavour (for example, he uses imagery from pre-WWI Middle America – like Ohio – or from the Depression era), I wonder if ‘jeet’ may derive from the jitterbug dance. I don’t know the dance, but I’m under the impression that it was lively. So ‘jitterbug your seat’ would mean ‘move your seat’ (‘Move!’, ‘Get up and dance!’), ‘jeet’ may be a rhyming way of shortening ‘jitterbug’ to ‘jit’.
But that’s speculation on my part. What is the origin of ‘jeet your seat’?
Ignore the link(it’s just a blog, I’m in the habit of always citing my quotes).
Couldn’t find a damn thing, but Bester was born in NYC in 1913, so I think LiveOnAPlane is probably on the right track, it’s either from an obscure jazz song from the 30’s/40’s or Alfie just used the zoot suit/jazz vernacular and made it up.
It’s entirely possible that it means absolutely nothing, no more than the “reat” (or “reet”) in “reat pleat.” It rhymes, it lends cadence; it could be taken as a sort of spoken “scat.”
