Whats a jamoke?

Question

Whats a jamoke?

Answer 1

Slang for coffee

Answer 2

Jamoke, meaning "a stupid or inconsequential fellow," is used mainly in informal speech or slang and only rarely appears in print.

Jamoke is thought to have originated about a century ago as jamocha in the argot of sailors or gangsters (or perhaps both). Jamocha was probably a blend of Java and Mocha, names of two locations famous for their coffee beans. What does coffee have to do with a stupid fellow? Nothing. In its original incarnation, jamocha was jargon for a cup of coffee, used much in the same way we use cup of java today. As recently as the Prohibition era, a writer used the "coffee" sense, observing, "There ain't nothin' stronger in the booze line than pure alky mixed with jamocha."

We're not sure how jamocha made the jump from coffee to cretins, but the extension of meaning seems to have occurred during the 1920s. It was then that members of the U.S. military began referring to each other first as jamochas (perhaps to identify someone who wasn't any brighter or more important than a cup of coffee) and then as jamochs. The word seems to have settled into its jamoke spelling during the 1940s.