The Etymology of Jingoism
Jingoism is one of the most precisely datable words in the political dictionary. In 1878, during a tense moment of the Russo-Turkish War, the British music-hall singer G. H. Macdermott introduced a song with the chorus: 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. The song became enormously popular among hawks who supported British naval intervention against Russia. The radical journalist George Holyoake, opposing that intervention, sneered at these enthusiasts as jingoes — and almost simultaneously coined jingoism for their attitude. Both words were in print by 1878. The phrase by Jingo itself is older, a mild English oath of obscure origin attested from the 17th century, possibly a euphemism for Jesus. From a music-hall chorus jingoism passed into permanent political vocabulary, sometimes paired with the French-derived chauvinism, which carries similar weight.