1. A name for various climbing and twining shrubs with tough pliable stems found in tropical and subtropical forests; applied in the West Indies to various sapindaceous plants, as species of Paullinia and Serjania, and Cardiospermum grandiflorum; in central America, to the rhamnaceous Berchemia volubilis, and to a species of Zisyphus; in Australasia, to Ventilago viminalis, Ripogonum parviflorum, Rubus australis, and other plants of similar habit.
1725. Sloane, Jamaica, II. 185. Supple-Jacks. The stalk … is about the thickness of one’s thumb…. They grow in woods and are used for walking sticks.
1773. Cook, Voy. S. Pole, I. v. (1777), I. 96. In many parts the woods are so over-run with supple-jacks, that it is scarcely possible to force one’s way amongst them.
1814. Pursh, Flora Amer. Septentr., I. 188. Zisyphus volubilis … in the Dismal swamp, near Suffolk in Virginia,… is known there by the name of Supple-Jack.
1820. T. Green, Univ. Herbal, II. 260. Paullinia Polyphylla; Parsley-leaved Paullinia, or Supple Jack.
1864. Grisebach, Flora Brit. W. Ind. Isl., 788/1. Supple-jack: Paullinia curassavica, barbadensis, and Cardiospermum grandiflorum.
1867. Sauter trans. Hochstetter’s New Zealand, vi. 135. The so-called ‘supple-jack’ of the colonists (Ripogonum partiflorum).
1884. J. H. Kerry-Nicholls, King Country, xxii. 266. The supple-jacks, which we found growing everywhere [in New Zealand] in a perfect network of snakelike coils.
b. The stems of these plants as a material.
1804. A. Duncan, Mariner’s Chron., II. 251. Bits of blankets … sewed together with split supple-jacks.
1865. Reader, No. 119. 405/2. Lashed together with strips of supple-jack.
2. A walking-stick or cane made of the stem of one of these plants; a tough pliant stick.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Rand., xxiv. He bestowed on me several severe stripes, with a supple Jack he had in his hand.
1785. Wolcot (P. Pindar), Odes to R.A.’s, I. iii. Wks. 1812, I. 73. Take, take my supple-jack, Play Saint Bartholomew with many a back!
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, xxvii. You will never rest till my supple-jack and your shoulders become acquainted.
1891. Meredith, One of our Conq., xxxi. A good knot to grasp;… there’s no break in it, whack as you may. They call it a Demerara supple-jack.
Hence Supplejackically adv. (humorous nonce-wd.), in a manner suggesting the use of a supple-jack.
1844. J. T. Hewlett, Parsons & W., liv. My father looked supple-jackically at me.
