The earliest citation in the
Oxford English Dictionary is from 1917. The term's dissemination was due, in part, to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.
For example, a newspaper article introduced the term to readers in
Grants Pass, Oregon in 1913:
"A campaign of ridicule directed toward the extermination of the "Jay Walker Family" was inaugurated [in Tacoma WA] today by the local automobile club. The "Jay Walker Family" according to explanations made today is numerous. It is composed of those pedestrians who cross congested streets without first looking to see if it is safe to do so. The local automobile club today adopted resolutions suggesting propaganda to be distributed all over the country to "kill off the Jay Walker Family." Automobile clubs all over the country ... will be asked to aid in exterminating "Mr. and Mrs. Jay Walker and all the little Walkers."
The word
jaywalk is a
compound word derived from the word
jay, an inexperienced person and a curse word that originated in the early 1900s, and
walk. No historical evidence supports an alternative
folk etymology by which the word is traced to the letter "J" (characterizing the route a jaywalker might follow).
In towns in the American Midwest in the early 20th century, "jay" was a synonym for "rube", a pejorative term for a rural resident, assumed by many urbanites to be stupid, slightly unintelligent, or perhaps simply naïve. Such a person did not know to keep out of the way of other pedestrians and speeding automobiles.
Originally, the legal rule was that "all persons have an equal right in the highway, and that in exercising the right each shall take due care not to injure other users of the way." In time, however, streets became the province of motorized traffic, both practically and legally. Automobile interests in the USA took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s; a counter-campaign to name (and disapprove of) "jay drivers" failed.
