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2022: Creating a Lexicon of Future
J is for Jingoism
Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country’s advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one’s own country as superior to others — an extreme type of nationalism. ~ Wikipedia
The first known use of the term “jingo” goes back to 1878.
It was part of a song by G.H. MacDermott and George W. Hunt. As a song sung in British pubs, it was the chorus part of a catchy tune after the Russo-Turkish War:
We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money, too.
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.The common vernacular was to say “by Jingo” instead of saying the off color and religiously tasteless “by Jesus” — let’s remember, it was 1878, people were more cautious with their swearing.
It became increasingly descriptive of the Theodore Roosevelt Administration’s foreign policy after the events that spurred the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt took the term and seemingly embraced it as the rationale for an…
