1. A large leather jug for beer, etc., coated externally with tar. ? Obs.
1591. Nashe, Prognost., 24. Cuppes, cannes, pots, glasses, and black iacks.
1619. Pasquil’s Palin. (1877), 157. The great blacke Iack well fild with Sack.
1645. Milton, Colast., Wks. (1851), 367. Hee runs to the black jack, fills his flagon, spreds the table, and servs up dinner.
1672. Davenant, Unfort. Lovers (1673), 121. He looks as if he had a black Jack under His Cloak.
1822. Scott, Nigel, xxii. Ale which he brought in a large leathern tankard or black-jack. [‘Used under this name at Winchester College in 1840.’ C. B. Mount.]
2. A miner’s name for zinc sulphide or blende.
1747. Hooson, Miner’s Dict., N iij b. It is most commonly found in hard Veins and Pipes, some do call it Black-Jack.
1762. Gentl. Mag., 400. Blende, called by the miners black-jack or mock ore.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 373. Zinc is procured … from blende or black-jack.
3. U.S. A shrubby kind of oak (Quercus nigra).
1856. Olmsted, Slave States, 383. The gray beech, and the shrubby black-jack oak.
1863. Times, 16 June, 12/4. The intrenchments and abbatis in the black jack thicket.
1879. Tourgee, Fool’s Err., xv. 75. The wide fire-place, in which the dry hickory and black-jack was blazing brightly.
† 4. Sc. A black leather jerkin: see JACK. Obs.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, VIII. Prol. 99. Some garris wyth a ged staf to jag throw blak jakkis.
1820. Scott, Monast., x. With their glittering steel caps, and their black-jacks.
5. A popular name of the mustard beetle.
1886. Standard, 24 May, 2/1. The mustard beetle (Phædon betula), commonly known as the ‘Black Jack.’
