or job-trot, subs. (old: now recognised).—A slow trot: hence a dull round; an unvarying and uninteresting method. As adj. monotonous; easy-going. Hence, adv. JOG-TROTTY.
1709. M. BRUCE, Sermon, p. 15. You that keeps only your old JOB-TROOT, and does not mend your pace, you will not wone at soul-confirmation: there is a whine old JOB-TROOT ministers among us, a whine old JOB-TROOT professors, they have their own pace, and faster they will not go.
1756. The World, No. 193. They contented themselves indeed with going on a JOG-TROT in the common road of application and patience.
1766. GOLDSMITH, The Vicar of Wakefield, xx. All honest JOG-TROT men, who go on smoothly and dully.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v. JOGG-TROT.
1852. DICKENS, Bleak House, xvii., p. 142. ‘It’s rather JOG-TROTTY and humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!’
1872. M. E. BRADDON, Dead-Sea Fruit, i. There is a JOG-TROT prosperity in the place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the world-worn spirit.
1885. PAYN, The Talk of The Town, vii. They … settled their wigs upon their foreheads and started off again at a JOG TROT in search of another mare’s nest.
1890. St. James’s Gazette, 9 April, p. 4, col. 1. Yet the yoke is meekly borne by the JOG-TROT undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge.
