Long time ago, "jay" was a pejorative (adiplomat - please note the spelling) term used to describe country folk. As you can guess, it was used by city slickers.
When jays would come to the big city (we're talking 20,000 people, here), they'd be awestruck. Wandering around looking up at the three and four story buildings, they'd often cross the streets in dangerous places (like the middle of the street, instead of the cross walks).
This caused quite a problem for traffic (horses can't just stop on a dime while pulling a carriage), so they instituted laws against that sort of thing. The fact that they actually _called_ it "jay walking" in official legal documents is surprising. I thought the government was supposed to be unprejudiced, officially speaking. |
