Jingoism: The Endnotes

A small addition to the video on Chauvinism () about the origins of the word "Jingoism". Check out the song from 1878

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Welcome to the Endnotes, where I put all the fun facts I can’t fit into the main videos! Today, some extra bits of information from my video about Chauvinism — and if you haven’t seen that yet, click on the card.

As we saw there the word chauvinism referred originally to excessive French patriotism. Well, the parallel word jingoism referred originally to excessive English patriotism. It first appears in the late 19th century and comes from the word jingo, as in by jingo. Jingo seems to have been originally a nonsense word from the 17th century, used by magicians in the phrase hey jingo to call for something to reappear, the opposite of hey presto used when an object disappears. But the word was soon adopted as a minced oath or taboo deformation of the word Jesus, with by jingo being used to translate French Par Dieu “by God”. By Jingo became a common English interjection, and was later used in a music-hall song calling for an aggressive military stance against Russia in the 1870s during the Russio-Turkish war. The chorus goes “We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do, / We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too, / We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true, / The Russians shall not have Constantinople.” Soon after the word jingo and jingoism were used to refer derisively to blustering patriots and chauvinists calling for war.

As always, you can hear even more etymology and history, as well as interviews with a wide range of fascinating people, on the Endless Knot Podcast, available on all the major podcast platforms as well as our other YouTube channel. Thanks for watching!