jukebox

Etymology

It is formed from English juke + box,^[2][3][4][1] juke being a roadhouse or brothel, a cheap roadside place with food, drink and music for dancing, recorded in the OED from 1930.^[2][4][5] The word was African-American vernacular,^[6][5] and Etymonline gives the earlier form “jook joint” from 1935.^[6] It is probably from Gullah juke (“disorderly, wicked”), also joog, a word of Gullah, the creole of the coast of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida.^{[2][6][7][4][5][8]} The Gullah word is thought to be of West African origin:^[2][5] the OED and Wordorigins compare Wolof dzug (“to live wickedly”),^[2][8] Barnhart compares that word and Bambara dzugu (“wicked”),^[4] and Hendrickson glosses the Wolof word as "to lead a disorderly life".^[9] Ayto thinks the West African language still unidentified.^[5] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate gives another account: it takes the word from a dialect “jukehouse”, a brothel, from a verb juke meaning to have sex, of Atlantic Creole origin and akin to Jamaican English and Krio words meaning to poke or stab.^[10] Etymonline reports that the adjective was said to have arisen in central Florida, and suggests that the spelling with -u- may have been meant to distance the word from its origins.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A machine that plays a chosen recording when a coin is put in: 1939, in Sunflower Petals, a publication of the Sunflower Agricultural High School in Moorhead.^[2] Merriam-Webster and Etymonline also give 1939,^[7][6] while Barnhart dates jukebox to 1937,^[4] and Dictionary.com gives the much earlier span 1915–20.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Before jukebox there was jook organ or juke organ, recorded in 1937.^[6][12] Tréguer found it in the Miami Herald of 7 May 1937, which reported that the coin-operated music boxes of Florida night spots were being called jook organs and that writers had agreed on the spelling juke.^[12] According to Hendrickson, the name passed from these juke organs, which sounded like hurdy-gurdies, to the coin-operated phonographs that became popular in the early 1940s.^[9] The new word replaced older terms such as nickel-in-the-slot phonograph and coin-operated phonograph.^[1] A Billboard article of 1945, quoted by Etymonline, recalled that the trade long resisted the name and even planned a national campaign against it, but that juke box spread around the world during the war as American soldiers went abroad.^[6] The clipped form juke, a jukebox, is recorded from 1940.^[2] In computing, jukebox has been used since 1955 for a storage device holding many disks or tapes, any of which can be read;^[2] the Oxford Dictionary of New Words notes that the "jukebox principle" was discussed from the early 1960s but became practical with the optical discs of the 1980s.^[13]

Timeline

• 1939 – a coin-operated machine that plays selected recordings.^[2][7][6] Barnhart dates it to 1937.^[4]
• 1955 – in computing, a storage device holding many disks or tapes.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A coin-operated machine that plays music recordings chosen by the customer, found in bars, cafés and similar places: Somebody put a nickel in the jukebox and the diner filled with music.^{[14][7][10][2]}
2. In computing, a device holding many optical discs or tapes and a mechanism that loads any of them as needed.^[2][3][13]

Related words

• juke
• box

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b Wilton, Dave, Wordorigins.org, wordorigins.org, p. "juke / jukebox", 2 December 2024
9. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
10. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "‘jukebox’: meaning and origin", 22 August 2023
13. ^ a b Knowles, Elizabeth; Elliott, Julia, eds. (1997), The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins