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JABBER . To talk thick and fast, as great praters usually do, to chatter like a magpye; also to speak a foreign language. He jabbered to me in his damned outlandish parlez vous, but I could not understand him; he chattered to me in French, or some other foreign language, but I could not understand him.
JACK . A farthing, a small bowl serving as the mark for bowlers. An instrument for pulling off boots.
JACK ADAMS . A fool. Jack Adams's parish; Clerkenwell.
JACK AT A PINCH . A poor hackney parson.
JACK IN A BOX . A sharper, or cheat. A child in the mother's womb.
JACK IN AN OFFICE . An insolent fellow in authority.
JACK KETCH . The hangman; vide DERRICK and KETCH.
JACK NASTY FACE . A sea term, signifying a common sailor.
JACK OF LEGS . A tall long-legged man; also a giant, said to be buried in Weston church, near Baldock, in Hertfordshire, where there are two stones fourteen feet distant, said to be the head and feet stones of his grave. This giant, says Salmon, as fame goes, lived in a wood here, and was a great robber, but a generous one; for he plundered the rich to feed the poor: he frequently took bread for this purpose from the Baldock bakers, who catching him at an advantage, put out his eyes, and afterwards hanged him upon a knoll in Baldock field. At his death he made one request, which was, that he might have his bow and arrow put into his hand, and on shooting it off, where the arrow fell, they would bury him; which being granted, the arrow fell in Weston churchyard. Above seventy years ago, a very large thigh bone was taken out of the church chest, where it had lain many years for a show, and was sold by the clerk to Sir John Tradescant, who, it is said, put it among the rarities of Oxford.
JACK PUDDING . The merry andrew, zany, or jester to a mountebank.
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