Sunday Word: Jackanapes

[sallymn]

jackanapes [jak-uh-neyps]

noun:
1a an impertinent, presumptuous person, especially a young man; whippersnapper.
1b an impudent, mischievous child.
2 (archaic) an ape or monkey.

Examples:

Meanwhile two jackanapes gathered this morning on the basketball court, the first public court downtown, to settle a score. Matt Goodman and I have been jawing at each other for a couple of years now about who would win a game of one on one. (Tim Rogers, Carpenter Park Hosted Its First Official Basketball Game Today, D Magazine, May 2022 )

But after four cocktails the Coney Island jackanapes started to mislay its manners. It demanded yet more booze. When its benefactor refused, it seized a whisky bottle and knocked him senseless to the floor. (Johnathan L Wright, Victorian Strangeness: The drunken monkey that smashed up a bar, BBC News, August 2014)

But do you realize that I would be looked upon as the most foolish jackanapes in the South Seas if I took a young girl like you in with me here on Berande? (Jack London, Adventure)

You pestilent young jackanapes, do you suppose I haven't noticed your idleness? (Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street)

Origin:

mid-15c, 'a monkey,' also 'an impertinent, conceited fellow, an absurd fop,' a general term of reproach (in mid-15c especially a contemptuous nickname for William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk), of unknown origin. Apparently from Jack of Naples, but whether this is some specific personification of Jack (which is attested from 16c as 'saucy or impertinent fellow') or folk etymology of jack + ape is unknown. Century Dictionary suggests 'origin, it is supposed, a man who exhibited performing apes.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The most widespread story connects the origins of this word with William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. He was steward of the Royal Household under Henry VI, but was accused of treason and banished in 1450, only to be murdered at sea off Dover. His emblem was an ape’s clog and chain (a clog here being not a type of shoe but a heavy block of wood to stop the animal escaping). This led to his being described in a scurrilous poem the year before his death as ape-clog and posthumously as Jack Napes.

Though Jack Napes might therefore seem to derive from the ill-fated duke, something that has often been assumed, the experts are sure that it came from another source and was applied to the Duke because of his odd emblem. The real origin probably lay in a playful name for a tame ape, in which the second part was a case of metanalysis (in which an ape has been turned into a nape), with an s on the end to make it match other surnames of the period, like Jacques or Hobbes.

It went through various forms until it settled down to its modern spelling. The idea behind it moved from a pet name for an ape to a man acting in some way like an ape. The OED gives the sense in one of its wonderful definitions as 'One who is like an ape in tricks, airs, or behaviour; a ridiculous upstart; a pert, impertinent fellow, who assumes ridiculous airs; a coxcomb.' (World Wide Words)