jamoke

Meaning

Noun

• Coffee.
• Stupid person, fool.
• Penis.

Origin

• Appeared at the end of the 19th century as a term for coffee, a .
• By the 1920s or 1940s jamoke was also attested in the sense of "fool, idiot", perhaps suggesting they lacked mental abilities beyond that of a cup of coffee, or perhaps an unrelated word; the first syllable is reminiscent of jaboney, jiboney, and the second syllable is reminiscent of moke. Also spelled jamook, giamoke, and giamope, the term as used for an idiot has also been suggested to derive from a dialectal Italian (Neapolitan or Sicilian) word giamope.
• In the 1960s it also began to be used as slang for male genitalia.
• This term may be the origin of cup of joe and joe; see those entries for more.