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Why do so many English words have Jack on it?

Best Answers

"Jack" is a nickname for "John", an extremely common name in English. The word is often used in the sense of "an ordinary person", in particular, a person of the working class. (Cf every man Jack, and Shakespeare "Since every Jack became a gentleman/There's many a gentle person made a Jack" from Richard III). read more

' Mister Micawber's answer was: ''English words have a number of meanings so that we can save money on typesetting costs. Actually, I am sure that many languages are characterized by polysemy. read more

Thus many Anglo-Saxon words have a French (or Latin) counterpart in English. But this is hardly unique to English! Japanese, for example, usually has a Chinese borrowing for most native Japanese words--and on top of that, it has borrowed a massive number of words from English. read more