jig

• enPR: jĭg; IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɪɡ/
• Rhymes: -ɪɡ

An assimilated form of earlier gig, from Middle English gigge, from Old French gige, gigue (“a fiddle, kind of dance”), from Frankish *gīge (“dance, fiddle”), from Proto-Germanic *gīganą (“to move, wish, desire”), from Proto-Indo-European *gheiǵh-, *gheigh- (“to yawn, gape, long for, desire”). Cognate with Middle Dutch ghighe (“fiddle”), German Geige (“fiddle, violin”), Danish gige (“fiddle”), Icelandic gígja (“fiddle”). More at gig, geg.

jig (plural jigs)

1. (music) A light, brisk musical movement; a gigue.
2. (traditional Irish music and dance) A lively dance in 6/8 (double jig), 9/8 (slip jig) or 12/8 (single jig) time; a tune suitable for such a dance. By extension, a lively traditional tune in any of these time signatures. Unqualified, the term is usually taken to refer to a double (6/8) jig.

   they danced a jig

   • 2012, Tom Lamont, How Mumford & Sons became the biggest band in the world (in The Daily Telegraph, 15 November 2012)

     Soon Marshall is doing an elaborate foot-to-foot jig, and then they're all bounding around. Shoulder dips. Yee-ha faces. It's an impromptu hoedown.

3. (traditional English Morris dancing) A dance performed by one or sometimes two individual dancers, as opposed to a dance performed by a set or team.
4. (fishing) A type of lure consisting of a hook molded into a weight, usually with a bright or colorful body.
5. A device in manufacturing, woodworking, or other creative endeavors for controlling the location, path of movement, or both of either a workpiece or the tool that is operating upon it. Subsets of this general class include machining jigs, woodworking jigs, welders' jigs, jewelers' jigs, and many others.

   Cutting circles out of pinewood is best done with a compass-style jig.

6. (mining) An apparatus or machine for jigging ore.
7. (obsolete) A light, humorous piece of writing, especially in rhyme; a farce in verse; a ballad.
   • 1647, John Fletcher, Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn:

     A jig shall be clapped at, and every rhyme / Praised and applauded by a clamorous chime.

8. (obsolete) A trick; a prank.
   • 1635, James Shirley, The Coronation:

     This Innovation? Is't not a fine Jigg? / A precious cunning in the late Protector / To shuffle a new Prince into the State.

jig (third-person singular simple present jigs, present participle jigging, simple past and past participle jigged)

1. To move briskly, especially as a dance.

   The guests were jigging around on the dancefloor

2. To move with a skip or rhythm; to move with vibrations or jerks.
   • Rudyard Kipling

     The fin would jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all.

3. (fishing) To fish with a jig.
4. To sing to the tune of a jig.
   • Shakespeare

     Jig off a tune at the tongue's end.

5. To trick or cheat; to cajole; to delude.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Ford to this entry?)

6. (mining) To sort or separate, as ore in a jigger or sieve.
7. To cut or form, as a piece of metal, in a jigging machine.

Clipping of jigaboo,[1] of uncertain origin, perhaps an African word. Alternatively, jigaboo is derived from jig (“dance”).

jig (plural jigs)

1. (US, offensive, slang, dated) A black person.
   • a. 1969, John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces:

     “You got a new jig, huh?” The boy looked out at Jones through his swirls of oiled hair. “What happened to the last one? He die or something?”

   • 2011, Andrew Lithgow, Retribution‎, →ISBN, page 228:

     “…Lucky for me he wasn’t a jig, otherwise I couldn’t have done it.”
     “Jig?”
     “Nigger. Afro American.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.