subs. (common).—1. A sweetheart; a mistress: also BIT OF JAM. LAWFUL-JAM = a wife.
c. 1880. Broadside Ballad. ‘Just the Identical Man.’ And he made this young girl feel queer When he called me his JAM, His pet and his lamb.
c. 1886. Broadside Ballad. ‘Up they Go.’ There were three bits of JAM stepping out of the tram, So we tipped them a wink in a trice.
1889. W. E. HENLEY, Villon’s Good-Night. Gay grass-widows and LAWFUL-JAM.
2. (venery).—The female pudendum: whence TO HAVE A BIT OF JAM = to copulate: cf., TART. Fr., sucre.
3. (racing).—A certainty of winning; clear profit: also REAL JAM.
4. (common).—Excellence; good luck; happiness. JAM-UP (adj. and adv.) = the pink of perfection; SLAP-UP (q.v.); BANG-UP (q.v.). Also REAL JAM.
1855. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), Nature and Human Nature, p. 273. Connubial bliss, I allot, was REAL JAM UP.
1882. T. A. GUTHRIE (‘F. Anstey’), Vice Versâ, xiv. ‘Ah!’ observed Dick. ‘I thought you wouldn’t find it all JAM! And yet you seemed to be enjoying yourself, too,’ he said with a grin, ‘from that letter you wrote.’
1889. The Mirror, 26 Aug., p. 6, col. 2. He’ll marvel at the rod you have in pickle For him who now considers you REAL JAM.
1892. MILLIKEN, ’Arry Ballads, p. 56. Society’s lions’ wag their tails on the cheap, and that’s JAM.
1892. KIPLING, Barrack-Room Ballads, ‘Oonts.’ It ain’t no JAM for Tommy.
5. (colloquial).—A crush; a crowd.
1812. H. and J. SMITH, Rejected Addresses. All is bustle, squeeze … and JAM.
1864. J. R. LOWELL, Fireside Travels, p. 111. The surest eye for … the weak point of a JAM.
1889. Illustrated Bits, 13 July. ‘I knew that there would be such a JAM that I couldn’t get inside the door.’
6. (American thieves’).—A ring.—MATSELL (1859).
7. (gaming).—The pool at Nap, into which each dealer pays, the winner of the next nap taking the lot.
Adj. (common).—Neat; smart; spruce: cf., subs. sense 5.
Verb. (old).—To hang.—GROSE (1785).
