Wiktionary

high jinks

English

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WOTD – 12 March 2023

Etymology

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Probably related to jink (“(verb) to make a quick evasive turn; to whirl about when dancing, to dance; (noun) a quick evasive turn”),[1] probably originally onomatopoeic, expressing quick movement.[2]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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high jinks pl (plural only)

  1. (Scotland, games, historical) An old Scottish parlour game in which people were chosen, usually by throwing dice, to perform some humorous act or drink a large amount of an alcoholic beverage, with a forfeit if they were unable to do so.
    • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter XV, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, pages 264–265:
      [T]he frolicsome company had begun to practise the ancient and now forgotten pastime of High Jinks. This game was played in several different ways. Most frequently the dice were thrown by the company, and those upon whom the lot fell were obliged to assume and maintain, for a time, a certain fictitious character, or to repeat a certain number of fescennine verses in a particular order. If they departed from the characters assigned, or if their memory proved treacherous in the repetition, they incurred forfeits, which were either compounded for by swallowing an additional bumper, or by paying a small sum towards the reckoning.
  2. (by extension)
    1. Boisterous activity or behaviour; lively fun.
      Synonym: (archaic) jinks
      • 1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], “St. Ambrose’s College”, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC, page 10:
        Only one tutor has rooms here; and I should think, if he's a reading man, it wont be for long before he clears out; for all sorts of high jinks go on on the grass-plot, and the row on the staircases is often as bad, and not half so respectable, as it used to be in the middle passage in the last week of the half year.
      • 1988 January 15, Tom Boeker, “A Night at Dykes Who Date/Crusaders [theatre review]”, in Chicago Reader‎[1], Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Reader, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 October 2022:
        But given the funny hats and juvenile hijinx, it's hard to buy the play's more serious intentions.
      • 2011, Kim Newman, “Postscript: The Post-modern Horror Film”, in Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen since the 1960s, revised edition, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, part 1 (Nightmare Movies), page 288:
        Day of the Dead stretches the zombie film just about as far as it can go – and the film [George Andrew] Romero wanted to make could have been even more challenging – but the horror movie audience is more interested in the partying hi-jinx of trendy monsters like [Dan] O'Bannon's funky zombies, Freddy Krueger or Herbert West.
    2. Tricky or waggish behaviour; mischief.
      Synonyms: (Caribbean) commess, shenanigans
      • 1828 December, [John Wilson], “Noctes Ambrosianae. No. XL.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXIV, number CXLVI, part I, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, page 690:
        High Jinks! High Jinks! High Jinks! The haggis has puttin' out the fire, and sealed up the boiler—
      • 1912, Lester Chadwick [pseudonym; Howard Roger Garis], “Hitting a Teacher”, in Baseball Joe on the School Nine: Or Pitching for the Blue Banner (Baseball Joe Series; 2), New York, N.Y.: Cupples & Leon Company, →OCLC, page 3:
        That's what happened to me the last time you fired a high snowball. Peaches. That's why I didn't want you to try another while I'm around. You wait until I'm off the campus if you've got to indulge in high jinks.
      • 1971, Don Pendleton, Chicago Wipeout (The Executioner; book 8)‎[2], New York, N.Y.: Open Road Integrated Media, published 2014, →ISBN:
        It was a face familiar to millions of Americans around the country, an almost intimate face to anyone who'd ever watched a televised news program or any other national hi-jinks from Chicago.
      • 2005, Scott J. Evans, “Evil Deeds”, in Breathe Deep the Passing Wind, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN:
        Those bastards hadn't left the school and gone back to their hi-jinks like we thought. Not at all. They'd been looking for us, eager to bash our brains in.
      • 2009, Taylor Branch, “Yeltsin and the Gingrich Revolution”, in The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, London, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 195:
        Apparently the man had a reputation for hi[-]jinks, such as filing fake flight plans to deceive [Bill] Clinton's barnstorming rivals.
      • 2014 August 27, Kent Bell, “Hi-jinx Stories”, in Look Ma, No Hands, No Legs Either, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 41:
        Even though I have no arms or legs I did put my mom through some tough times. I did my share of rebellion and hi-jinx.
      • 2018, L. J. McLeod, “The Perils of Having a Roommate Obsessed with the Occult on Hallows’ Eve”, in T. C. Phillips, editor, Behold the Nightmare: Special Halloween Issue (Specul8: Central Queensland Journal of Speculative Fiction), Rockhampton, Qld.: Specul8 Publishing, →ISBN, page 73:
        You know those movies where the goofy housemate reads a book of spells on Halloween and hijinxs ensue?
      • 2019 August 14, A. A. Dowd, “Good Boys Puts a Tween Spin on the R-rated Teen Comedy, to Mostly Funny Effect”, in The A.V. Club‎[3], archived from the original on 4 March 2021:
        One could argue, of course, that most comedies about the risqué misadventures of teenagers are actually pretty wholesome. Horny hits like American Pie and last year's Blockers are, at heart, sweet coming-of-age stories, secretly reassuring everyone that the kids are all right—that no matter how many f-bombs they drop, no matter how raunchy their MPAA-antagonizing hijinks get, they're really just fumbling their inexperienced way through normal rites of passage.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “high jinks, n.” under “jink, n.1”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2022; “high jinks, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ “jink, v.1”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “jink, v. and n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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