man jack:
(plural: ‘man jacks‘)
a man, considered as a single person (or several men in general), usually found in the phrases ‘every man jack’, ‘no man jack’,
four man jacks in race for a position
e.g.
Last night’s party at Maggie’s was a hen party; not a man jack was seen at all.
During the Gold Rush season in the USA and Australia, every man jack was at the pits, trying his luck.
The supervisor was so glad the job was done in time that he announced an extra day’s pay for every jack man.
The ship was so over-crowded and the captain was so harsh that not only the man jacks but also the junior officers were driven to insanity and there was a sense of mutiny brewing up on the ship.
For a blog post that tries to explain the origin of the idiom ‘every man jack’, please click here.
Compare: jack
Note: ‘Manjack’, one word and with a capital ‘M’, is a name given to an ethnic group of people an their language in a place called Montserrat in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal in Africa, and a name given to a kind of bushy plants and trees. For a blog post about a ‘manjack’ tree, please click here.
Return to “jack“.
