yellow jack

American  

noun

yellow jack, plural yellow jacks plural

1. Informal. quarantine flag.

2. Pathology. yellow fever.

3. any carangoid fish, especially a Caribbean food fish, Caranx bartholomaei.

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yellow jack British  

noun

1. pathol another name for yellow fever

2. another name for quarantine flag

3. any of certain large yellowish carangid food fishes, esp Caranx bartholomaei, of warm and tropical Atlantic waters

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• yellow jack
  plural
• yellow jacks
  plural

Etymology

Origin of yellow jack

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40

Example Sentences

Washburn and Hedges had heard the tales brought back by Mountain Men John Colter and Jim Bridger of the Yellow Rock region of what is now the northwest corner of Wyoming.

From Time Magazine Archive

One party had gone toward the Warren, another to Yellow Rock.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 26, September, 1880 by Various

Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and Yellow Rock Light got little for their pains.

From Poor Man's Rock by Johnson, Frank Tenney

Above here a great river comes in, which they call the Yellow Rock River—the ‘Ro’jaune,’ Jussaume calls it.

From The Magnificent Adventure Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman by Hough, Emerson