jaywalking en · NOUN · etymology 1
Etymology
Back-formation from jaywalker. Analyzable as jaywalk + -ing, or jay (“a stupid person”) + walking.
Meanings
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(uncountable) An act of behaving as a jaywalker.
[…] when he had felt unhappy over a movie theater large enough to contain ten times the population of Schoenstrom, and been cursed by a policeman for jaywalking, and had passed a hotel entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviare[…
1919, Sinclair Lewis, Free Air, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, page 257:For decades in this country, California was the national capital of jaywalking enforcement.
2021 January 13, Alan Ehrenhalt, “Jaywalking and the Dilemma of ‘Victimless’ Crimes”, in Governing, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2021:
Translations (2)
ja 信号無視 (the act of jaywalking) · da fumlegængeri (the act of jaywalking)