Steeplejack, lumberjack…is there a third “jack” profession out there?
Jack of all trades
bottle jack (beer)
Hi-Jacker
CEO of a fast food joint?
“jack” by itself is a term for a sailor, as in “every man jack”.
A whipjack is a “whining beggar who pretends to be a sailor”, whether you want to consider that a profession or not.
Cheap Jack = common merchant.
Jack=sailor is a shortening of Jack Tar, the marine equivalent of the army’s Tommy Atkins (although Jack Tar is actually older).
Jack-in-the-water, an attendant at dockside stairways (frequently on the River Thames) who helps secure boats and haul goods up to the quay.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has quite a few entries under Jack. Most are not job names, but it should be noted that job names using jack tend to be formed simply by suffixing or prefixing a word with the man’s name Jack. Brewer notes that jack is generally used depreciatingly.
The cheap in Cheap Jack does not mean “inexpensive” or “of little worth.” The word cheap that we use with those two meanings derives from the fact that cheap used to be the verb “to sell.” The surname Chapman simply indicates that some ancestor was a merchant or cheapman.
In the case of Cheap Jack, it would be the jack that indicated that the wares were of lesser value.
Thanks for the input everybody. A related question, what about stocks? Laughing-stock is familiar to everyone; there is also the little-known gazingstock (the meaning is just what you’d think). Is there another stock?
It should be noted that in the logging industry, there are no lumberjacks. The people who chop down trees are known generically as loggers. They may have more specific job titles such as feller, but no one is a lumberjack.
If there were such a job as a lumberjack, it would probably be someone who works in a lumber mill. But even there they don’t use that term.
That having been said, let’s all join in a rousing chorus of the Lumberjack Song:
Oh I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK
I sleep all night and I work all day…
I think the primary usage of “stock” is in livestock, which, of course, is not often applied to humans.
There is such a thing as a bluestocking, but that’s a horse of a different color (so to speak).
WRT the OP: a jumping-jack is a toy, as well as a type of calisthenics. A Jack Mormon is a nominal member who doesn’t practice Mormonism.