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Definition of jack verb from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

jack

verb
 
/dʒæk/
 
/dʒæk/
(North American English, informal)
Verb Forms
present simple I / you / we / they jack
 
/dʒæk/
 
/dʒæk/
he / she / it jacks
 
/dʒæks/
 
/dʒæks/
past simple jacked
 
/dʒækt/
 
/dʒækt/
past participle jacked
 
/dʒækt/
 
/dʒækt/
-ing form jacking
 
/ˈdʒækɪŋ/
 
/ˈdʒækɪŋ/
Phrasal Verbs
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  1. jack something | jack somebody (for something) to steal something from somebody, especially something small or of low value
    • Someone jacked my phone.
    Word Originlate Middle English: from Jack, familiar form of the given name John. The term was used originally to denote an ordinary man, also a youth (mid 16th cent.), hence the ‘knave’ in cards and ‘male animal’. The word also denoted various devices saving human labour, as though one had a helper (sense (1), and in compounds such as jackhammer and jackknife); the general sense ‘labourer’ arose in the early 18th cent. and survives in lumberjack, steeplejack, etc. Since the mid 16th cent. a notion of ‘smallness’ has arisen, hence senses (4) and (5).
See jack in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary
previously
adverb
 
 
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