JOCKEY

jockey, a professional rider of race-horses, now the current usage (see horse-racing). the word is by origin a diminutive of "jock," the northern or scots colloquial equivalent of the name "john" (cf. jack). a familiar instance of the use of the word as a name is in "jockey of norfolk" in shakespeare's _richard iii._ v. 3, 304. in the 16th and 17th centuries the word was applied to horse-dealers, postilions, itinerant minstrels and vagabonds, and thus frequently bore the meaning of a cunning trickster, a "sharp," whence "to jockey," to outwit, or "do" a person out of something. the current usage is found in john evelyn's _diary_, 1670, when it was clearly well known. george borrow's attempt to derive the word from the gipsy _chukni_, a heavy whip used by horse-dealing gipsies, has no foundation.