different between jass vs jasm

English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Alemannic German Jass.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /jas/

Noun

jass (uncountable)

1. (card games) A trick-taking card game popular in Switzerland and neighboring areas of Germany and Austria.
   • 1986, Kenneth Hsu, The Great Dying:

     A Swiss jass master and I teamed up against my wife and an American, who were both rank beginners.

   • 2010, Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching, p. 244:

     Jass is similar to bridge, though with completely different cards, and is a national obsession, for young and old alike.

   • 2014, Donal McLaughlin, translating Arno Camenisch, Behind the Station:

     When Nonna plays cards, she moves her teeth from side to side. It makes a bit of a racket. It distracts the other jass players – that's why Nonna's so good at jass.

Further reading

• jass on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• An explanation of the card game's rules

Etymology 2

Obsolete and variant forms.

Noun

jass (uncountable)

1. Obsolete spelling of jazz
   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 417:

     “Yet I've noticed the same thing when your band plays—the most amazing social coherence, as if you all shared the same brain.”

     “Sure,” agreed “Dope,” “but you can't call that organization.”

     “What do you call it?”

     “Jass.”

Icelandic

Noun

jass m (genitive singular jass, no plural)

1. Alternative form of djass

Declension

English

Etymology

Apparently a variant of jism.

Noun

jasm (uncountable)

1. (archaic, US, slang) Zest for accomplishment; drive.

   • Jeremy has the kind of jasm a junior exec needs to reach the top of the ladder in the corporate world.

2. (archaic) Jazz.

Quotations

• 1863, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Miss Gilbert's Career: An American Story, page 350, Charles Scribner's Sons

  “Yes, sir.  No mistake about that.  Oh! she's just as full of jasm!”

  Frank Sargent laughed again.  “You've got the start of me,” said he.  “Now tell me what ‘jasm’ is.”

  “Well, it’s a sort of word, I guess, that made itself,” said Cheek.  “It’s a good one though—jasm is. If you’ll take thunder and lightning, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix ’em up, and put ’em into a woman, that’s jasm.”

• 2004 June 30, Elizabeth Cooper, Drusilla with a Million, page 197, Kessinger Publishing

  I don’t think there is anything more pitiful than a man, who has been in business for himself, to have to give up and say he is a failure. It hurts to be compelled to go into some one’s shop as a clerk or a mechanic when you’ve once been your own master. It’ll put jasm into a lot of men that have lost their nerve and only need some one to set them straight.

References

• 1951, Mathews’ Dictionary of Americanisms
• 1997, Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Random House

Anagrams

• JAMs, jams