arch. [JACK sb.1 35.] A buffoon, clown or merry-andrew, esp. one attending on a mountebank.
1648. C. Walker, Hist. Independ., I. 21. The Junto-men, the Hocus-Pocusses, the State-Mountebanks, with their Zanyes and Jack-puddings!
1664. Etherege, Com. Revenge, III. iv. Sir, in a word, he was Jack-pudding to a mountebank.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 47, ¶ 6. The Name of that Dish of Meat which it loves best…. In Great Britain, Jack Puddings.
1752. Fielding, Covent Garden Jrnl., No. 10. Writers are not … to be considered as mere jackpuddings, whose business it is only to excite laughter.
1826. Scott, Woodst., xxviii. What make you in that fool’s jacket, and playing the pranks of a jack-pudding?
1881. Besant & Rice, Chapl. of Fleet, I. x. (1883), 75. They were again jocund,… the jester and Jack-pudding of the feast.
attrib. 1668. T. St. Serfe, Tarugo’s Wiles, A iv. Be gone with your Jack-Pudding Speech.
1836–48. B. D. Walsh, Aristoph., Knights, II. iv. You rascal, how you worry me with your jack-pudding nonsense.
Hence Jack-puddinghood, the character of a jack-pudding, buffoonery.
1749. H. Walpole, Lett. to Mann, 3 May. Grossatesta, the Modenese minister, a very low fellow, with all the jack-puddinghood of an Italian.
