Jints (Giants)
Ben Zimmer of the American Dialect Society added this "Jints" comment on the ADS listserv in November 2005.
One for Barry (surprised it's not already on his site)...
Someone on alt.usage.english asked about the nickname "Jints", now occasionally used for the New York football Giants (or the Jersey Giants, as we say across the Hudson), but previously applied to the New York baseball Giants. Turns out that it was used for the Cuban Giants, the first professional black baseball team, back in 1889.
New York (NY) Post
WHAT’S IN A NAME? ; ORIGIN OF ‘JINTS’ MONIKER PROVING TO BE GIANT PUZZLE
By Phil Mushnick
Published Jan. 28, 2001, 5:00 a.m. ET
Jints, I reckon, was the creation of a headline writer who years ago mimicked the accents of New Yorkers in squeeze-pronouncing, “Giants” while distinguishing the baseball N.Y. Giants from the football ones.
If one were to say Giants quickly and with a local accent, two syllables become one, thus we get “Jynts,” which rhymes with “pints.” But through the years, “Jynts” has come to be spoken as Jints, which rhymes with “mints.” And that, I’m almost positive, is wrong, or at least not what was originally intended.
The headline writer, way back when, could not shorten Giants to Gints, or the soft G would have been pronounced as a hard G, which would’ve made no sense at all. All he or she could do to shorten the team’s name as it’s pronounced here was turn it into “Jynts,” as in pints.
One for Barry (surprised it's not already on his site)...
Someone on alt.usage.english asked about the nickname "Jints", now occasionally used for the New York football Giants (or the Jersey Giants, as we say across the Hudson), but previously applied to the New York baseball Giants. Turns out that it was used for the Cuban Giants, the first professional black baseball team, back in 1889.
New York (NY) Post
WHAT’S IN A NAME? ; ORIGIN OF ‘JINTS’ MONIKER PROVING TO BE GIANT PUZZLE
By Phil Mushnick
Published Jan. 28, 2001, 5:00 a.m. ET
Jints, I reckon, was the creation of a headline writer who years ago mimicked the accents of New Yorkers in squeeze-pronouncing, “Giants” while distinguishing the baseball N.Y. Giants from the football ones.
If one were to say Giants quickly and with a local accent, two syllables become one, thus we get “Jynts,” which rhymes with “pints.” But through the years, “Jynts” has come to be spoken as Jints, which rhymes with “mints.” And that, I’m almost positive, is wrong, or at least not what was originally intended.
The headline writer, way back when, could not shorten Giants to Gints, or the soft G would have been pronounced as a hard G, which would’ve made no sense at all. All he or she could do to shorten the team’s name as it’s pronounced here was turn it into “Jynts,” as in pints.