Jackpot originally described the reward to the big winner in a game of progressive poker, in which you need a pair of jacks or better to “open the pot.” Because the stakes grow higher until the requisite pair is dealt, jackpot has gradually expanded to include the pots of gold in slot machines, game shows, and state lotteries.

The great American game of poker is so embedded in our national consciousness that it deals us a number of everyday words and expressions:

• four-flusher. A cardsharp who is out to cheat you may be dealing from the bottom of the deck and giving you a fast shuffle, in which case you may get lost in the shuffle. You might call such a low-down skunk a four-flusher. Flush, a hand of five cards that are all of one suit, flows from the Latin fluxus because all the cards flow together. Four-flusher characterizes a poker player who pretends to such good fortune but in fact holds a worthless hand of four same-suit cards and one that doesn’t match.
• blue-chip. Now that I’ve laid my cards on the table, let’s see what happens when the chips are down. Why do we call a gilt-edged, sure-thing stock a blue-chip stock? Because poker chips were white, red, and blue, and the blue were traditionally the most valuable.
• stack up. Why, when we compare the value and power of two things, do we often ask how one stacks up against the other, as in “How do the Red Sox stack up against the Yankees?” Here the reference is to the columns of chips piled up before the players around a poker table.
• bottom dollar. Poker chips also account for the expressions bottom dollar and top dollar. Betting one’s bottom dollar means wagering the entire stack, and the top dollar, or chip, is the one that sits atop the highest pile on the table. Indeed, the metaphor of poker chips is so powerful that one of the euphemisms we use for death is cashing in one’s chips.
• pass the buck. How did the expression pass the buck come to mean “to shift responsibility”? Why should handing someone a dollar bill indicate that responsibility is in any way transferred?

  The buck in pass the buck was originally a poker term designating a marker that was placed in front of the player whose turn it was to deal the next hand. This was done to vary the order of betting and to keep one person from dealing all the time, thus transferring the disadvantages of being the first to wager and cutting down on the chances of cheating. During the heyday of poker in the nineteenth century, the marker was often a hunting knife whose handle was made of a buck’s horn. The marker defined the game as Buckhorn Poker or Buck Poker and gave us the expression to pass the buck.

  In the Old West, silver dollars often replaced buckhorn knives as tokens, and these coins took on the slang name buck. President Harry S. Truman, reputed to be a skillful poker player, adopted the now-famous motto “The buck stops here,” meaning that the ultimate responsibility rested with the president.

(See DIE, GOLF, METAPHOR.)

Jason. An amusing pastime is to string together the first letters of people’s names as initials of words in meaningful statements. Lee Iacocca’s last name, for example, could be said to represent the first letters of “I Am Chairman Of Chrysler Corporation of America.”

The name Jason is composed of the first letters of five successive months—July, August, September, October, November. If James Jason were a DJ on FM/AM radio, the first letters of all twelve months would be represented sequentially, starting with June:

J. JASON, DJ
FM/AM

John. The name John (or Jon) can be transmogrified phonetically into six different women’s names or nicknames simply by changing the internal vowel sound:

Jan

Jane

Jean

Jen

Joan

June

Jovial. Among the literary sources that flow into our English language, mythology is a major tributary. We who are alive today constantly speak and hear and write and read the names of the ancient gods and goddesses and heroes and heroines, even if we don’t always know it. For example, jovial, an adjective that means “merry, inspiring mirth,” comes from Jove, the name the ancient Romans gave to the king of their gods because it was a happy omen to be born under the influence of his planet.

Welcome to a pantheon of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, and fabulous creatures that inhabit the world of classical mythology and the words that echo them:

• amazon. The original Amazons were an ancient nation of female warriors who cut off their right breasts in order to handle their bows more efficiently. Amazon originally meant “breastless”; it now means “a strong woman,” especially one who works for an online purveyor of books and other products.
• aphrodisiac, venereal, venerate. The goddess of love and beauty gives us many words from both her Greek and Roman names, Aphrodite and Venus.
• herculean. The great Greek hero Hercules needed all his power to complete twelve exceedingly laborious labors. We use a form of his name to describe a mighty effort or an extraordinarily difficult task.
• hermaphrodite, mercurial. A hermaphrodite is a plant, animal, or human being possessing both male and female reproductive organs. The word unites the Greek deities Hermes and Aphrodite, who had a son named Hermaphrodite. Because of its fluidity and mobility, quicksilver is identified by the more common label Mercury, the Roman name for Hermes, the winged messenger of the gods. Mercury also bequeaths us the adjective mercurial, meaning “swift, eloquent, volatile.”
• odyssey. Odysseus, the most famous of all of Homer’s creations in the Iliad and Odyssey, spent ten years after the fall of Troy wandering through the ancient world and encountering sorceresses and Cyclopes (monsters with 20/ vision). The wily hero’s name lives on in the word we use to describe a long physical or spiritual journey marked by bizarre turns of events.
• panic. The frenetic Greek nature god Pan was said to cause sudden fear by darting out from behind bushes and frightening passersby. That fear now bears his name.
• siren. The hero Odysseus was tempted by mermaids who perched on rocks in the sea and lured ancient mariners to their deaths. Their piercing call has given us our word for the rising and falling whistle emitted by ambulances, fire engines, and police cars.
• stentorian. In Homer’s Iliad, the Greek herald Stentor was a human public address system, for his voice could be heard all over camp. Today, the adjective form of his name means “loud-voiced, bellowing.”

(See CLUE, ECHO, TANTALIZE, WEDNESDAY.)