Translingual

Jynx torquilla

Proper noun

Jynx f

1. A taxonomic genus within the family Picidae – the wrynecks.

References

• Gill, F. and Wright, M. (2006) Birds of the World: Recommended English Names, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691128276

English

Alternative forms

• (adaptations of the Latin nominative singular, iynx) iynx [in the 19th century], jynx [from the 17th century onwards]
• (adaptations of the Latin stem, iyng-) iyng, jyng [both disused after the 17th century]

Noun

jynx ‎(plural jynges)

1. A bird, the wryneck, once thought a bird of ill omen (Jynx torquilla).
   • 1649, George Daniel, Trinarchodia: Henry V, line ccxcv:

     Where not a Silver Iyng, or Pigeon, fell To Pay the Markman.

   • 1706, John Kersey (editor), Phillips’s New World of Words, “Jynx”:

     Jynx, the Wry-neck, or Emmet-hunter, or as some say, the Wag-tail.

   • 1708, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London XXVI, page 123:

     The Jynx or Wryneck…I first heard this year on March 29.

   • 1845, The Zoologist: A Miscellany of Natural History III, page 1,107:

     Its sharp and harsh cry, resembling a repetition of Jynx, Jynx, Jynx.

   • 1857, Samuel Birch, History of Ancient Pottery (1858), volume I, page 297:

     A youth or females hold a bird, supposed to be the iynx, in their hands.

2. (transferred sense) A charm or spell a jinx (quod vide).
   • ante 1693, Sir Thomas Urquhart (translator), François Rabelais (author), The Third Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, chapter i, page 23:

     These are the Philtres, Allurements, Jynges, Inveiglements [les philtres, iynges, et attraictz], Baits, and Enticements of Love.

3. The name of an order of spiritual intelligences in ancient “Chaldaic” philosophy.
   • 1655, Thomas Stanley, The History of the Chaldaick Philosophy (1701), page 17/2:

     Then is the Intelligible Jynx; next which are the Synoches, the Empyreal, the Ætherial and the Material; after the Synoches are the Teletarchs…Intelligent Jynges do themselves also understand from the Father By unspeakable Counsels being moved so as to understand.

Derived terms

• jinx

Related terms

• jyngine

Translations

References

• NED V (H–K; 1st ed., 1901), § 3 (J), page 646/3, “Jynx”