the jab

As soon as a vaccine became a real possibility, that is to say around December 2020, the media started talking with some relish about the jab.  A UK grandmother, Margaret Keenan (pictured above), was the first person to get the jab in Britain. Other firsts and notable jabs were recorded through December and January. 

 The expression the jab dates back to the late 1800s in America where, as is recorded in  Green’s Dictionary of Slang, it was part of the jargon of drugtakers, particularly at that time people who took morphine and cocaine.  

 It was picked up by the US military in the early stages of World War II as the term for a vaccination against TB and polio.  And now as mass vaccinations begin, the jab is resurfacing as the slang reference that captures that nervous feeling that we all have about fronting up to a hypodermic needle.