jake

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   dated US slang, disparaging: an unsophisticated person from the countryside; a rustic or yokel

   The travelers stopped a country jake who was sitting on a log beside the road.

2. 2
   noun

   a young male wild turkey, especially one under two years old

   The hunter watched a jake follow two older gobblers across the field.

3. 3
   adj

   US slang: satisfactory, fine, or all right

   Once the loose wire was repaired, everything was jake again.

From Jake, a familiar form of Jacob. By the mid-nineteenth century the name was used as a stereotypical label for a rustic, the sense in Huckleberry Finn. The turkey noun likewise uses a familiar male name; the later adjective meaning 'fine' is of uncertain origin.

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